The Brutal Fate of ISIS Leaders’ Wives After Execution! –

When ISIS rose, the world focused on its fighters  and ruthless leaders, but behind them stood the   wives.

And as the caliphate collapsed, these women  discovered that their husbands’ power could not   save them.

What followed was vengeance and an end  as brutal as the terror they once lived beside.

It started when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared  the ISIS caliphate in Mosul on June 29,   2014.

His words were not just for fighters.

His speech called for men and women to join   what he described as a new Islamic empire.

The  announcement spread quickly through social media,   videos, and propaganda magazines.

Within  weeks, men were pouring into Iraq and Syria   from all over the world.

And with them came  women, wives, brides, and widows of jihad.

Some of these women were already married  to ISIS fighters before the caliphate was   declared.

Others traveled from places as far as  Europe, North Africa, and Central Asia to become   “jihadi brides.

” Online recruiters promised them  a life of dignity, purpose, and religious duty.

In reality, many of them were stepping  into a life of control, fear, and violence.

In cities like Mosul, Raqqa, and  Fallujah, ISIS seized homes, schools,   and even hospitals.

The wives of commanders  and fighters moved into these stolen houses.

They often lived in relative comfort  compared to the starving local population.

While ordinary families struggled to find food,  some ISIS wives had access to electricity,   water, and supplies brought  in through smuggling networks.

Not all women had a choice in this life.

Many  Yazidi and Christian women were taken as captives,   forced into marriages with ISIS leaders.

For them, the title of “wife” meant slavery.

They were controlled, abused, and stripped of  freedom, treated as part of the spoils of war.

Among the loyal wives, some became more than  just silent partners.

They played active roles   in the system of terror.

In Raqqa, female police  units known as the al-Khansaa Brigade were made   up mostly of ISIS wives.

They patrolled  the streets, making sure women wore full   black coverings, and punished anyone who broke  the rules.

Punishments could include lashings,   imprisonment, and even execution.

These wives  were feared almost as much as their husbands.

By 2015, intelligence agencies estimated that  more than 4,700 foreign women had joined ISIS   across Iraq and Syria.

They came from countries  like Tunisia, France, Germany, Russia, and the   United Kingdom.

Some were as young as teenagers.

Others were widows of earlier conflicts who   saw ISIS as a chance to start over.

Their fates  became tied to the rise of the men they married.

But as ISIS expanded, so did the number  of its enemies.

The wives believed they   were protected by their husbands’  power.

They did not realize that   the same rise that gave them comfort and  authority would soon bring destruction.

And that destruction began by 2016, when the  so-called caliphate was no longer growing.

It was   shrinking.

Cities that ISIS had once controlled  with an iron grip began to fall one after another.

The most important battle started in October 2016,  the fight for Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.

The Iraqi Army, Kurdish forces, and coalition  allies surrounded Mosul step by step.

Airstrikes   hit supply lines, bridges, and ISIS checkpoints.

Food and medicine became harder to find.

Ordinary families were trapped in their homes,   and the wives of ISIS leaders suddenly  found themselves in the middle of a siege.

Inside the city, loyalty began to crack.

Wives of  commanders like Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi and Abu   Muslim al-Turkmani tried to disguise themselves as  civilians and escape.

But people recognized them.

Many locals had lost brothers, fathers, and  children to ISIS executions, and they were   filled with rage.

When these wives were caught,  some were beaten to death on the spot.

For the   victims’ families, this was revenge.

For the  women, it was a brutal end to years of privilege.

Mosul’s Old City became the hardest battleground.

The narrow alleys were packed with families hiding   in cellars and basements.

Women clutched their  children while bombs fell from the sky.

Some   begged Iraqi soldiers to spare them, hoping their  children could survive even if they themselves   were punished.

But others made a different choice.

A number of ISIS wives strapped on suicide belts,   waiting for the moment soldiers  entered.

They blew themselves up,   killing not only the advancing troops but also  anyone nearby, including women and children.

Their deaths did not come in the way  they imagined, there was no honor,   no safety, no protection.

Their last  hours were spent in dark cellars,   with explosions overhead and fear all around.

While Mosul was crumbling, Raqqa in Syria became  the beating heart of ISIS.

From 2014 until 2017,   it was their self-declared capital.

This was where  orders were given, where propaganda videos were   made, and where many of the group’s most powerful  leaders lived with their families.

By 2017,   however, Raqqa itself was under siege.

The  Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by heavy   U.S.

airstrikes, had surrounded the city.

For  the wives of ISIS leaders, Raqqa became a cage.

The city was overcrowded.

Thousands of ISIS  fighters had moved their families there,   believing Raqqa was the safest stronghold.

Mansions, government buildings, and stolen   homes were filled with wives and children.

Some women lived in relative comfort,   with food and supplies smuggled in.

Others were trapped in crumbling houses,   hiding from the bombings  that shook the city daily.

One of the most well-known ISIS leaders in Raqqa  was Turki al-Binali, a cleric from Bahrain who   had risen to become the group’s chief religious  scholar.

His wife and children lived with him   in Raqqa, moving from one safe house to another.

When an airstrike killed al-Binali in May 2017,   his family’s life changed instantly.

His  widow tried to escape with her children,   but she was quickly caught.

Kurdish fighters  found her hiding in underground tunnels,   the same kind of tunnels many ISIS  families used as their last refuge.

Other women never made it that far.

As the siege  tightened, civilians who had suffered under ISIS   rule saw their chance for revenge.

They knew which  houses belonged to ISIS leaders.

Wives suspected   of being connected to commanders were dragged from  hiding places.

Some were beaten in the streets.

Others were burned alive in public squares.

Years  of terror had turned into an explosion of anger.

By 2018, the caliphate was falling apart  everywhere.

One city after another slipped   out of ISIS control.

What was once a vast  empire across Iraq and Syria had shrunk   to patches of desert and broken towns.

Deir ez-Zor, a province in eastern Syria,   became one of the last hiding places.

Fighters,  their wives, and children crammed into small   villages along the Euphrates River, moving  constantly to escape bombs and advancing troops.

For the women, life was now stripped of the  luxury they once had.

Many ended up in detention   camps like al-Hol and Roj, guarded by Kurdish  forces.

These camps quickly filled with tens of   thousands of women and children.

Life inside was  unbearable.

The ground was muddy in winter and   scorching in summer.

Food was limited, often just  bread, rice, or lentils.

Clean water was scarce,   and disease spread fast through the tents.

Mothers struggled to keep their children alive,   while many babies died from malnutrition  or infections that went untreated.

Among the women trapped were foreign recruits,  including the young British girls who had left   London in 2015, the “Bethnal Green girls.

”  By 2018, some of them had become widows,   while others were still raising children  fathered by ISIS fighters.

Their lives had   gone from school uniforms in London to rags in  the dust of Syria.

They were not alone.

Thousands   of women from Europe, Asia, North Africa,  and the Middle East were in the same camps,   unwanted by their home countries and despised by  locals who saw them as the faces of ISIS cruelty.

Not all women made it to the camps.

On the  frontlines, Syrian soldiers and rival militias   showed little mercy.

If they found out a woman was  the wife of a senior commander, the punishment was   often instant death.

Some were executed in front  of their children.

Others were dragged away and   never seen again.

The chaos made it impossible  to count how many were killed during this period,   but stories of women shot in villages or  left behind in mass graves became common.

By March 2019, the war against  ISIS had reached its final stage.

The once powerful caliphate that stretched across  two countries was now reduced to a single village,   Baghouz, in eastern Syria.

This dusty  settlement on the banks of the Euphrates   River became the last stronghold for thousands  of fighters and their families.

The world’s   most feared terror group was trapped in a  patch of land less than two square miles.

The situation inside Baghouz was desperate.

Wives of ISIS fighters lived in makeshift  tents built from blankets, plastic sheets,   and scraps of metal.

Smoke from constant  airstrikes filled the sky, and gunfire   echoed through the fields.

Food and water were  running out.

Children cried from hunger.

Mothers   dug shallow holes in the dirt to protect their  babies from shrapnel.

Every day felt like the end.

American drones circled above,  watching every move.

On the ground,   Kurdish fighters from the Syrian  Democratic Forces slowly advanced,   cutting off escape routes.

Wives of senior leaders  like Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, ISIS’s spokesman,   were cornered with no way out.

Some of these  women carried rifles, ready to fight alongside   their husbands.

Others clutched their babies,  hoping to survive the storm that was closing in.

The final assault was brutal.

Airstrikes  pounded Baghouz, tearing apart tents and   shelters.

Hundreds were killed in a matter  of days.

Many women refused to surrender.

Some strapped suicide vests to themselves.

Others tried to run across the open desert,   only to be gunned down by fighters  who saw them as dangerous threats.

There were also women who chose to  end their lives on their own terms.

One report described a group of wives  setting themselves on fire inside a   tent rather than face capture.

To them,  surrender was worse than death.

For others,   the choice was taken away.

Bombs fell without  warning, and families were buried where they sat.

When Baghouz fell on March 23,   2019, the ISIS dream ended.

But for the  wives, their nightmare had only begun.

After Baghouz, more than 60,000 women  and children were sent to detention   camps in northeast Syria.

Families had  to live in thin tents that offered little   protection from the freezing winters  and burning summers.

Water was dirty,   food was limited, and medical care  was almost impossible to find.

The camps also became breeding  grounds for anger and revenge.

Some women remained deeply loyal to ISIS and  refused to accept defeat.

They formed hidden   groups, enforcing their own strict rules inside  the fences.

Any woman who spoke against ISIS or   tried to leave the ideology was seen as a traitor.

These loyalists carried out brutal punishments.

In   2019 alone, more than 80 murders were reported  in al-Hol, many of them women stabbed to death   in their tents or strangled at night.

Even guards  were attacked with knives and smuggled weapons.

Children in the camps grew up surrounded by  violence and fear.

Many never went to school   and had no toys or safe places to play.

Instead,  they listened to mothers telling them about   “martyrdom” and revenge.

Aid workers warned that  these camps could raise a new generation filled   with the same hatred that fueled ISIS in the first  place.

The world looked away, but the suffering   inside these fences showed that even though ISIS  had lost its land, its shadow still lived on.

In Iraq, the hatred left behind by the group  was overwhelming.

They had killed thousands,   destroyed whole neighborhoods, and left behind  countless mass graves.

When they finally lost   power, the anger of ordinary people boiled  over.

In towns like Tikrit, Fallujah, and Mosul,   families of victims did not wait for courts or the  government to act.

They wanted their own revenge.

Many locals believed that the wives were not  innocent.

Some had helped their husbands recruit,   collect money, or even point out neighbors  who resisted.

Even if a wife had no role,   her connection to ISIS made her a target.

By  2017, stories spread of women being dragged from   their homes or from refugee camps and punished  in public.

One case in Tikrit showed the full   force of this anger where a widow of an ISIS emir  was pulled into the street by families who had   lost sons and brothers to ISIS firing squads.

She was stoned to death as the crowd shouted.

In Fallujah, scenes of revenge were  recorded and shared online.

Videos   showed women in black robes lined up  against walls, executed by firing squads   after only minutes in front of makeshift  judges.

These trials were quick and harsh.

There was no time for defense or appeals.

For many Iraqis, prison was not enough.

They had lived through years of terror, and now  they believed only death could balance the scales.

In Mosul, locals attacked anyone linked to the   group.

Women suspected of being ISIS  wives were beaten in the streets,   their houses set on fire, or handed to  militias who carried out swift executions.

The brutality reached a point where  even human rights groups admitted they   could not count the exact number of women  killed.

This was revenge without limits.

But, not every ISIS wife was killed in the  streets.

Some were captured and taken into   courtrooms.

In Baghdad, the Iraqi government  decided to show no mercy.

Between 2018 and 2020,   hundreds of women stood trial.

Many of them  were not Iraqi.

They had come from countries   like Russia, Germany, France, and even the  United States to marry ISIS fighters.

Now,   far from home, they faced Iraqi judges who  carried the weight of years of bloodshed.

The trials were fast and unforgiving.

Most  lasted less than ten minutes.

There were   no long defenses, no detailed questioning.

Judges  usually had a single question asking whether they   were married to an ISIS fighter or not.

If the  answer was yes, it was almost always enough for a   death sentence or life in prison.

For the courts,  the marriage itself was proof of loyalty to ISIS.

The punishments were real and public.

In  2018, a Russian woman only 20 years old   was executed in Baghdad after admitting she  had joined her husband in Mosul.

In 2017,   a German woman was also sentenced to death for  supporting ISIS and living under its rule.

Dozens   of others from France, Turkey, and Central Asia  faced the same fate.

For Iraq, these women were   not victims.

They were seen as part of the  machine that had killed thousands of Iraqis.

Even those who escaped execution did not  truly escape punishment.

Life in Iraqi   prisons was brutal.

Torture and beatings were  common.

Many women died in prison long before   their sentences could be carried out.

For them,  the prison itself became a slow death sentence.

For the women who came from faraway countries,  their own governments refused to take them back.

Officials in Paris, London, and Berlin  said they were too dangerous to return,   and that they should stay in Syria  or Iraq to face justice there.

By 2019, reports showed more than 7,000  foreign wives and children were trapped   in Syrian camps.

Many had already lost their  husbands, who were killed in battle or blown   apart by airstrikes.

Others had seen their  men captured and executed.

Left behind,   the women had no country to return  to and no way to move forward.

Some of the women tried to find  ways out.

Smuggling networks grew   inside and around the camps.

For large  amounts of money, smugglers promised to   sneak them across borders into Turkey or  back into Iraq.

A few managed to escape,   but many were caught along the way and  either sent back to the camps or killed.

Others didn’t even make it that far; guards  often opened fire on women trying to run.

The families of ISIS’s top leaders carried the  weight of their husbands’ names, and for enemies   of ISIS, that alone was enough to seal their  fate.

When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi blew himself   up during a U.

S.

Special Forces raid in Idlib on  October 26, 2019, the shock was felt worldwide.

But the story did not end with him.

His surviving  wives were soon captured.

They became trophies in   a dangerous game.

Rival militant groups did not  want them alive.

Some were quietly executed,   their bodies left in secret graves, so that no  trace of Baghdadi’s bloodline could survive.

The same pattern repeated with his successor,  Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.

On February 3,   2022, U.

S.

forces stormed a safehouse in  Atmeh, a town near the Turkish border.

Qurashi detonated a bomb, killing himself, his  children, and his wives in an instant.

Their   bodies were crushed under the rubble.

For the  world, it was another blow to ISIS’s leadership.

For the families inside, it was a brutal end  without dignity, buried in dust and blood.

Today, the wives of ISIS leaders are  scattered across graves, prisons,   and dusty camps.

Few remain alive.

Most  met their last hours in pain and terror.

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Muslim Teacher Faces Execution for Reading the Bible — Then Jesus Did the Unbelievable – YouTube

Transcripts:
My name is N Jan.

It means light of the world in my language.

I did not choose this name.

My mother gave it to me 32 years ago in Kabul, Afghanistan.

She could not have known then what that name would come to mean.

She could not have known that one day I would meet the true light of the world in the darkest place imaginable.

Two years ago, I was sentenced to death by stoning in Afghanistan.

The charge was apostasy, leaving Islam, following Jesus Christ.

Today, I stand before you alive and free, and I want to tell you how I got here.

I want to tell you what God did.

But to understand the miracle, you must first understand the darkness.

Let me take you back to August 2021.

That was when everything changed for Afghanistan and for me.

>> Hello viewers from around the world.

Before Nor shares her story, we’d love to know where you’re watching from so we can pray for you and your city.

Thank you and may God bless you as you listen to this powerful testimony.

>> I was a teacher.

I had been teaching for 8 years at a girl’s school in Cabbell.

I taught literature and history to girls aged 12 to 16.

I loved my work.

I loved seeing their faces light up when they understood something new.

When they read a poem that moved them.

When they realized that learning could open doors they never knew existed.

These girls were hungry for education.

Their mothers had lived under Taliban rule before.

In the 1990s, when women could not work, could not study, could barely exist outside their homes, these mothers wanted different lives for their daughters, and I was helping give them that chance.

Then the Taliban returned.

I remember the day, August 15th.

I was preparing lessons for the new school year.

We were supposed to start in 2 weeks.

I had my lesson plans laid out on my desk.

I had borrowed new books from the library.

I was excited.

Then my father came home early from his shop, his face gray with fear.

He turned on the television.

We watched the news together.

The government had fallen.

The president had fled.

The Taliban were entering Kabul.

My mother began to cry.

She remembered.

She had lived through their rule before.

She knew what was coming.

Within days, everything changed.

The music stopped playing in the streets.

The colorful advertisements came down from the walls.

Women disappeared from television.

The news anchors were all men now, all with long beards, all wearing turbons.

Then came the decrees.

Women must cover completely.

Women cannot work in most jobs.

Women cannot travel without a male guardian.

And then the one that broke my heart, girls cannot attend school beyond the sixth grade.

Just like that, my job was gone.

Just like that, the futures of millions of girls were erased.

I will never forget going to the school one last time to collect my things.

The building was empty.

The classrooms where girls had laughed and learned were silent.

I walked through the halls and I felt like I was walking through a graveyard.

These were not just rooms.

These were dreams that had died.

I stood in my classroom and I looked at the empty desks and I wept.

I thought of Miam who wanted to be a doctor.

I thought of Fatima who wrote poetry that made me cry.

I thought of little Zara, only 12, who asked more questions than anyone I had ever taught.

What would happen to them now? What would happen to their dreams? I took my books home in a bag.

I felt like I was smuggling contraband.

In a way, I was.

Knowledge had become contraband.

Learning had become rebellion.

The next months were suffocating.

My world became smaller and smaller.

I could not work.

I could not go out without my brother or my father.

I had to wear the full burka, the one that covers everything, even your eyes behind a mesh screen.

I felt like a ghost, like I did not exist.

I would see women beaten in the streets by the Taliban’s religious police for showing a bit of ankle, for laughing too loudly, for walking without a male guardian.

I saw fear everywhere.

The city that had been coming alive after years of war was dying again.

But it was not just the rules that suffocated me.

It was the cruelty behind them.

It was the way they justified it all with Islam.

I had grown up Muslim.

I had prayed five times a day.

I had fasted during Ramadan.

I had read the Quran.

I believed in Allah.

But this this did not feel like the faith I knew.

This felt like something else.

Something dark and angry and hateful.

I started having questions.

Questions I could not ask anyone.

Questions that felt dangerous even to think.

Is this really what God wants? Does God really hate women this much? Does God really want half of humanity to be invisible, to be nothing, to be prisoners in their own homes? I would push these thoughts away.

Questioning your faith is dangerous in Afghanistan.

Questioning Islam can get you killed.

So, I kept my doubts locked inside my heart.

And I prayed and I tried to believe that somehow this was all part of God’s plan that I could not understand.

But then something happened that changed everything.

It was January 2022, 6 months after the Taliban returned.

I was at home going slowly crazy with boredom and frustration.

My younger sister Paresa came to visit.

She was crying.

She told me about her friend Ila.

Ila was 16.

Her family had married her off to a Taliban fighter, a man in his 40s.

Ila did not want to marry him.

She begged her family not to make her.

But they had no choice.

The Taliban commander wanted her.

And you do not say no to the Taliban.

The wedding happened.

Ila was crying through the whole ceremony.

She was a child.

A child being given to a man old enough to be her father.

Parisa told me this and she said something I will never forget.

She said that when Leila’s family was asked about it, they quoted a hadith.

They quoted Islamic teaching to justify giving a child to a grown man.

They said the prophet himself had married a young girl.

So this was acceptable.

This was Islamic.

This was right.

I felt something break inside me that day.

I felt angry.

Truly angry.

Not at the Taliban, not at Leila’s family, but at the system, at the interpretation, at the way faith was being used as a weapon to hurt and control and destroy.

That night, I could not sleep.

I lay in bed and I stared at the ceiling and I prayed.

I prayed to Allah and I said, “Is this really what you want? Is this really your will?” I got no answer, only silence.

The silence felt heavier than any answer could have been.

It was shortly after this that the idea came to me.

If I could not teach officially, I could teach unofficially.

If girls could not go to school, I could bring school to them.

I started small.

I contacted three mothers I knew from before.

Women whose daughters had been in my classes.

I told them I could teach their daughters in secret in my home.

just basic literacy and math, just enough to keep their minds alive.

The mothers were terrified.

They were also desperate.

They said yes.

That is how the secret school began.

Three girls in my family’s living room twice a week.

We would tell neighbors we were having Quran study.

We were careful.

We kept the real books hidden.

We had Islamic texts on the table in case anyone came to the door.

But underneath we were teaching literature, mathematics, history.

We were keeping the light of learning alive in the darkness.

Words spread quietly.

By March, I had seven girls.

By May, 12.

We had to move locations constantly.

One week in my home, one week in another mother’s home, always rotating, always careful.

We were like ghosts appearing and disappearing, teaching in whispers.

The girls were so hungry to learn.

They absorbed everything like dry ground absorbing rain.

They asked questions.

They wrote essays.

They solved equations.

They were alive in those moments.

Truly alive in a way they could not be anywhere else in the Taliban’s Afghanistan.

But I was always afraid.

Every knock on the door made my heart stop.

Every stranger who looked too long made me nervous.

The Taliban had informants everywhere.

Neighbors reported neighbors.

Family members reported family members.

One word to the wrong person and we would all be arrested.

The girls could be beaten.

I could be imprisoned or worse.

There were close calls.

Once a Taliban patrol was going door todo on our street doing random inspections.

We were in the middle of a lesson.

We had 30 seconds.

We hid all the books under floor cushions.

We brought out Qurans.

We covered our heads completely.

When they knocked, we were sitting in a circle reading Quranic verses.

They looked around.

They questioned us.

And then they left.

My hands did not stop shaking for an hour afterward.

Despite the fear, I kept teaching.

I had to.

Education was the only hope these girls had.

Without it, they would be married off young, trapped in homes, never knowing what they could have been.

I could not let that happen.

Even if it cost me everything, I had to try to give them a chance.

But as I taught them, something was changing inside me.

The questions I had pushed down were rising back up stronger.

Now I would read the approved Islamic texts we used as cover and I would see things I had never noticed before.

Contradictions, justifications for things that felt wrong.

The more I read, trying to find peace, the more troubled I became.

I witnessed things that haunted me.

A woman beaten in the street for letting her burka slip and show her face.

The Taliban fighter who did it quoted Quranic verses as he struck her.

I saw a young girl, maybe 14, whose hands were cut off for stealing bread to feed her siblings.

They did it in public in the square.

And they called it Islamic justice.

They called it God’s law.

I would go home and I would pray and I would ask, “Is this you? Is this what you want?” The silence from heaven was deafening.

One evening in June 2022, something happened that I think now was God’s hand, though I did not know it then.

I could not sleep.

The questions in my mind were too loud.

I got up in the darkness and I took out my phone.

This phone was my secret.

Most women were not supposed to have smartphones.

The Taliban wanted to control all communication, but I had one bought on the black market, hidden in my room.

I used it rarely and only late at night, connecting to my neighbor’s Wi-Fi that I had hacked the password for.

That night, I opened the phone and I started searching for answers.

I looked for Islamic scholars who might explain things differently.

I looked for interpretations that made sense of the cruelty I was seeing.

I read arguments and debates between different schools of Islamic thought.

Some of it helped a little.

Some of it made me more confused.

Then by accident, I clicked on a link that took me to a website I had not intended to visit.

It was a Christian website in Farsy.

Someone had translated Christian materials into my language.

My first instinct was to close it immediately.

Christians were kafir infidels.

I had been taught this my whole life.

Their book was corrupted.

Their beliefs were wrong.

To even read their materials was dangerous to my soul.

But I did not close it.

I do not know why.

curiosity maybe or desperation or perhaps God’s hand on my heart.

Though I would not have believed that then I read for maybe 5 minutes.

It was about Jesus, about his teachings, about love and forgiveness and peace.

It was simple.

It was beautiful.

It was nothing like what I had been taught Christians believed.

I closed the phone and I tried to forget what I had read.

But I could not forget the words stayed with me.

Over the next weeks, I kept thinking about it.

I told myself I was just curious.

I told myself I was just trying to understand different perspectives to be a better teacher.

I told myself many lies to justify what I was doing.

Late at night when everyone was asleep, I would take out my phone and I would go back to that website.

I would read more about Jesus, about his life, about what he taught.

The more I read, the more confused I became.

This Jesus seemed different from anything I had known.

In Islam, Isa is a prophet, yes, but a distant figure.

Here in these Christian writings, he was something more.

He was close.

He was personal.

He spoke to people with such love and such authority.

He healed the sick.

He defended the oppressed.

He elevated women in a time when women were nothing.

He challenged the religious leaders who used faith as a tool of power.

I found myself drawn to his words in a way I could not explain.

When I read his teachings, something in my heart responded.

It was like hearing a voice I had been waiting my whole life to hear.

But this was dangerous.

I knew it was dangerous.

I was playing with fire.

If anyone knew I was reading Christian materials, I could be arrested.

I could be beaten.

My family could be shamed.

The secret school would be destroyed.

Everything would be lost.

Yet, I could not stop.

By September 2022, I was deep into something I could not pull myself out of.

I had found websites with entire portions of the Bible translated into Farsy.

I read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

I read them over and over.

I read about Jesus touching lepers when everyone else rejected them.

I read about him talking to the Samaritan woman at the well, treating her with dignity when her own people shamed her.

I read about him defending the woman caught in adultery, saying, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

” I read the sermon on the mount, “Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek.

Blessed are the persecuted.

” I read these words in my dark room under my blanket with my phone hidden, terrified someone would hear me crying because I was crying.

These words touched something deep in my soul.

They spoke to the questions I had been asking.

They spoke to the pain I had been feeling.

They spoke to a hunger I did not even know I had.

Still, I told myself I was just learning, just exploring, just satisfying curiosity.

I was still Muslim.

I still prayed the five daily prayers.

I still fasted.

I still believed in Allah.

I was not converting.

I was just looking.

That is what I told myself.

But I was lying to myself.

Something was changing.

Something was shifting in my heart.

A door was opening that I did not know how to close.

In October, I found something that changed everything.

I found a website where I could download a complete Farsy Bible, not just portions, the whole thing, Old Testament and New Testament, everything.

There was a download button right there on the screen.

I stared at that button for a long time.

My hand hovered over it.

I knew that if I pressed it, I was crossing a line.

Possessing a Bible in Afghanistan was dangerous.

Possessing it as a Muslim was apostasy.

If anyone found it, I could be killed.

But I wanted it.

I wanted to read more.

I wanted to understand.

I wanted to know the truth.

Whatever the truth was, I told myself I would just download it, just read it, just satisfy my curiosity, and then I would delete it.

no one would ever know.

So, I pressed the button.

The file downloaded.

I saved it in a hidden folder on my phone, disguised with a different name.

I held my phone in my hands, and I felt like I was holding a bomb.

This little device now contained something that could end my life.

I did not read it that night.

I was too afraid.

I put the phone away and I tried to sleep, but sleep would not come.

The next afternoon, I was alone in my room.

Everyone else was out.

I locked my door.

I took out my phone.

I opened the hidden folder.

I opened the Bible file.

And I started reading.

I started with Genesis, with creation, with God speaking light into darkness.

I read for hours.

I lost track of time.

I was absorbed in these ancient words, these stories I had heard about but never really known.

the flood, Abraham, Moses, the Exodus, the prophets.

Then I moved to the New Testament, back to the Gospels I had read before, but now with more context, more depth.

I read Acts about the early church about persecution, about believers being scattered, but faith spreading anyway.

I read Paul’s letters.

Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, words about grace, about faith, about love, about freedom in Christ.

I did not understand everything.

Some of it was confusing.

Some of it seemed to contradict what I had been taught.

But some of it was so clear, so beautiful, so true that I felt it in my bones.

By December 2022, I had read the entire Bible once.

I was reading it again.

I had also found something else, an audio Bible.

Someone had recorded the entire Farsy Bible, every book, every chapter, every verse read aloud by native speakers.

I downloaded it onto a small USB drive I had bought.

This was safer than having it on my phone.

A USB drive could be hidden more easily.

It could be destroyed more quickly if needed.

I would listen to it at night lying in bed with tiny earphones hidden under my headscarf.

I would listen to the words washing over me in the darkness.

I would hear the voice reading Isaiah, Psalms, the Gospels, Revelation.

I would fall asleep to these words.

I would wake up to them.

They became the soundtrack of my secret life.

One night in late December, I was listening to the book of John, chapter 14.

Jesus was speaking to his disciples, comforting them, telling them not to be afraid.

Then I heard these words.

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

No one comes to the father except through me.

I sat up in bed.

I rewound and listened again and again.

These words struck me like lightning.

Jesus was not just claiming to be a prophet.

He was claiming to be the only way to God, the only truth, the only life.

This was not something a prophet would say.

This was something God would say.

I felt something crack inside me.

A wall I had been building to protect myself, to keep myself safe, to stay in the religion I had been born into.

That wall was crumbling.

And on the other side was Jesus looking at me, calling me.

I was terrified.

I was exhilarated.

I was confused.

I was more certain than I had ever been about anything all at the same time.

I did not sleep that night.

I lay in darkness listening to the audio Bible and I wrestled with God.

I wrestled with the truth.

I wrestled with what this all meant.

If Jesus was who he said he was, then everything changed.

Everything.

My life, my faith, my identity, my future, everything.

By the time dawn came, I was exhausted.

But something had shifted.

I did not have all the answers.

I did not understand everything.

But I knew one thing.

I believed Jesus was real.

I believed he was who he said he was.

I believed he was calling me.

I just did not know what to do about it.

The next days and weeks were a blur of confusion and fear and strange peace all mixed together.

I kept teaching the girls.

I kept living my outward Muslim life.

But inwardly, I was changing.

I was becoming someone new, someone I did not fully recognize yet.

I wanted to talk to someone about what I was feeling.

But who could I tell? My family would disown me.

My friends would report me.

The girls I taught would be horrified.

I was completely alone with this secret.

Alone except for Jesus, who was somehow becoming more real to me than anything else in my life.

It was January 2023 when something happened that I think now was God preparing me for what was coming.

We had a close call with the secret school.

Very close.

We were teaching in a house on the east side of the city.

Nine girls were there.

We were in the middle of a mathematics lesson.

Suddenly, we heard shouting outside.

Taliban trucks.

A raid on the house next door.

They were looking for someone.

Some man they suspected of working with the former government.

We froze.

The girls looked at me with terror in their eyes.

If the Taliban searched this house too, we were all finished.

I made a quick decision.

I told the girls to hide the books under floor cushions.

I told them to sit in a circle.

I brought out a Quran.

I told them to bow their heads like we were praying.

They obeyed immediately.

We sat there in that circle, heads bowed.

And I heard the Taliban next door breaking down the door, shouting, dragging someone out.

We heard a man screaming.

We heard gunshots.

We heard a woman crying.

And we sat there, heads bowed, pretending to pray, barely breathing.

I do not know what made me do what I did next.

I should have recited Quranic verses.

I should have said Muslim prayers.

But instead, in my mind, I prayed to Jesus.

I prayed desperately.

I prayed, “Jesus, if you are real, if you hear me, please protect us.

Please hide us.

Please do not let them come here.

” We sat like that for what felt like hours, but was probably 10 minutes.

The noise next door continued, shouting, breaking glass, a woman weeping, but no one came to our door.

No one knocked.

No one searched our house.

Eventually, we heard the trucks drive away.

We heard silence.

I opened my eyes.

The girls opened theirs.

We looked at each other.

We were alive.

We were safe.

They thought we had just been lucky.

But I knew something different.

I knew someone had heard my prayer.

Someone had protected us.

That was the day I stopped lying to myself about what was happening.

That was the day I admitted the truth that was growing in my heart.

I believed in Jesus.

Not just as a prophet, as my Lord, as my savior, as the son of God.

I still did not tell anyone.

I still lived outwardly as a Muslim.

I still prayed the five prayers, though my heart was elsewhere.

I still fasted during Ramadan, though I felt like a hypocrite.

I was living a double life and it was exhausting.

But what choice did I have? To confess faith in Christ in Afghanistan was to choose death.

So I kept my secret.

I kept teaching.

I kept reading the Bible in hidden moments.

I kept listening to the audio Bible at night.

I kept praying to Jesus when no one could hear me.

And I kept hoping that somehow someday I would find a way to live honestly, to live as the person I was becoming.

I did not know then that my time was running out.

I did not know that someone was watching me.

I did not know that soon everything would fall apart and I would face the choice I had been avoiding, Christ or death.

But God knew he was preparing me.

He was strengthening me.

He was getting me ready for what was coming.

The storm was gathering.

I just could not see it yet.

Asked two, the hidden word.

It was February 2023 when I first prayed to Jesus out loud.

I know the exact date because it was the anniversary of my father’s heart attack 3 years before.

He had survived, but that day always brought back memories of fear and helplessness.

That morning, I was alone in my room, and I felt overwhelmed with gratitude that my father was still alive.

Without thinking, without planning, I knelt down and I whispered, “Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you for my father’s life.

” The words came out before I could stop them.

And the moment they left my mouth, something changed.

Speaking his name aloud made it real in a way that thinking it never had.

It was like a door had opened between my inner world and my outer world.

For months, Jesus had been my private secret.

Now I had spoken to him out loud in my room in Kabell, Afghanistan, where speaking that name could get me killed.

My heart was pounding.

I looked around as if someone might have heard me even though I was alone.

But along with the fear came something else.

Peace.

A deep unexplainable peace that filled my chest and spread through my whole body.

I stayed kneeling there for a long time just feeling that peace, just being in that presence.

From that day on, I began praying to Jesus regularly, always in secret, always in whispers, always when I was sure no one could hear.

I would pray in the morning before anyone else woke up.

I would pray at night after everyone was asleep.

I would pray during the day if I found myself alone for even a few minutes.

I would lock my door or hide in the bathroom or stand in the kitchen pretending to cook while I whispered prayers to the God I was coming to know.

I was still outwardly Muslim.

I still went through all the motions.

Five times a day, I would wash and face Mecca and go through the physical movements of Islamic prayer.

But my heart was not in it anymore.

My heart was somewhere else.

My heart was with Jesus and I felt guilty about the deception.

But I did not know what else to do.

To stop praying as a Muslim would raise questions I could not answer.

To start praying as a Christian would mean death.

So I lived this double life.

And it was exhausting and terrifying and also strangely beautiful because even though I was alone, I did not feel alone.

Even though I was hiding, I felt seen.

Jesus was with me.

I could not explain it.

I just knew it.

I felt his presence.

When I prayed to him, I felt like someone was actually listening.

When I read his words, I felt like someone was actually speaking to me.

It was intimate and real in a way I had never experienced in all my years of practicing Islam.

Around this time, I started memorizing scripture.

I did this partly for practical reasons.

I could not always have my phone or USB drive with me.

If someone discovered them, I would be exposed.

But if I had scripture in my heart, no one could take that away from me.

I could carry it safely.

I could access it any time.

And so I began committing verses to memory.

The first passage I memorized was Psalm 23.

I had read it dozens of times.

Every time I read it, I cried.

It spoke to my soul.

So, I decided to learn it by heart.

I would read one verse, then close my eyes and repeat it.

Read another verse, repeat it over and over until I had the whole psalm fixed in my mind.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul.

I would whisper these words to myself throughout the day when I was afraid, which was often.

When I was teaching the girls and worried about being discovered.

When I heard Taliban trucks driving through the streets.

When I saw women being beaten or humiliated, I would whisper, “The Lord is my shepherd.

” And I would feel courage return.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

These words became my anchor.

In a country that had become a valley of death’s shadow, where evil seemed to rule, where fear was everywhere, these words reminded me that I was not alone.

God was with me.

Even here, even in Taliban ruled Afghanistan, even in my secret hidden faith, he was with me.

I memorized other passages, too.

John 14 where Jesus says, “Let not your heart be troubled, and I am the way, the truth, and the life.

” I memorized Romans 8 about nothing being able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

I memorized parts of the sermon on the mount.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

That verse struck me particularly hard.

Persecuted for righteousness.

That is what would happen to me if my faith was discovered.

I would be persecuted.

I would be punished.

But Jesus said that was a blessing.

He said the kingdom of heaven belonged to such people.

It was a strange comfort.

It did not make me less afraid, but it made my fear mean something.

It gave purpose to the risk I was taking.

The audio Bible on my USB drive became my most precious possession.

Every night, I would wait until the house was quiet.

I would lock my door.

I would take out the USB drive from its hiding place.

I had hidden it inside a small cloth bag that I kept inside a box of sanitary supplies.

No man would search there.

Even if Taliban raided our house, they would not look in such things.

It was the safest place I could think of.

I would plug tiny earphones into my phone, then connect the USB drive, and I would lie in bed listening to the word of God being read to me in my own language.

The voice was calm and gentle.

It felt like Jesus himself was sitting beside my bed, reading to me, comforting me, teaching me.

I would fall asleep to the sound of scripture.

It gave me dreams that were peaceful instead of the nightmares that haunted most of my sleep.

One night in March, I was listening to the Gospel of Matthew.

The reader reached chapter 5, the sermon on the mount.

Jesus was teaching about loving your enemies, about praying for those who persecute you, about turning the other cheek, about going the extra mile.

These teachings were radical.

They were opposite of everything I saw around me.

The Taliban taught hatred of enemies.

They taught violence and revenge.

They taught domination.

But Jesus taught something completely different.

Then I heard these words, “You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven.

” I stopped the audio.

I rewound and listened again.

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