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When the Taliban first rose to power, many  Afghans hoped the fighting might finally end.

But very quickly, another nightmare began  to unfold.

Streets, stadiums, and village   squares turned into places of death.

What the  Taliban unleashed was not just punishment,   but a system of horror designed to break a  nation, and its scars are still spreading today.

It started in the mid-1990s, when Afghanistan  was already broken.

Years of war after the   Soviet withdrawal had left the country divided  among armed groups.

These warlords fought each   other for cities, roads, and money.

Ordinary  people were trapped in the middle.

Robbery,   kidnappings, and killings were common,  and there was no real law left.

In this chaos, the Taliban began as a  small group in southern Afghanistan,   mainly around Kandahar.

Most of them were young  men who had grown up during the war.

Many had   studied only basic religious lessons in refugee  camps in Pakistan.

They promised order, safety,   and strict religious rule.

For people exhausted by  years of violence, that promise sounded appealing.

In 1994, the Taliban took Kandahar with little  resistance.

They moved fast, disarming rival   groups and executing those who refused to submit.

Their rise was not peaceful.

It was built on fear   from the very beginning.

Town after town fell as  commanders surrendered or fled.

By September 26,   1996, the Taliban reached Kabul.

The city had  already suffered years of shelling and hunger.

But the first thing the Taliban did was show  the country what their rule would look like.

Their first major act was the killing of Dr.

Mohammad Najibullah, the former president   of Afghanistan.

Najibullah had been living  inside a United Nations compound since 1992,   believing it offered protection.

The Taliban  ignored this completely.

They stormed the   compound, dragged him out, and brutally  abused him.

He was beaten, castrated,   and then shot dead.

His brother was killed as  well.

The Taliban then hung Najibullah’s body in   a public place in central Kabul.

Cigarettes  and money were stuffed into his mouth,   mocking him even in death.

His body  was left hanging for everyone to see.

The Taliban moved quickly to control every part  of daily life.

They set up their own Islamic   courts almost immediately.

These courts had no  lawyers, no appeals, and no written law that   people could study.

Judges were Taliban clerics  who answered only to their leaders.

Decisions   were made quickly and carried out the same day.

There was no room to question or defend oneself.

The Taliban banned music, television,  movies, photography, and most forms of   art.

Weddings were silenced.

Radios were  smashed.

Kite flying was banned.

Girls’   schools were shut down across the country, and  women were barred from working outside the home.

Women were ordered to wear the burqa at all  times.

Men were forced to grow long beards,   and those who shaved were beaten or jailed.

Taliban “vice police” patrolled the streets   with whips and sticks, stopping people  to check clothing, hair, and behavior.

Executions and physical punishments became part  of everyday life.

They were planned as public   warnings.

One of the most notorious places was  Ghazi Stadium in Kabul.

Once used for sports,   it was turned into a stage for punishment.

Afghan journalist Jason Burke described what   he witnessed there in 1998.

Before executions,  amputations were carried out in front of crowds.

Two men convicted of theft were brought into  the centre of the stadium.

Doctors were present,   not to save lives, but to make sure the  punishment was carried out properly.

One   hand and one foot were cut off from each man.

Blood soaked into the grass as thousands watched   in silence.

After the amputations, the men were  taken outside and shot dead.

When it was over,   people were ordered to leave, and the stadium was  later used for sports as if nothing had happened.

The Taliban called this “eye for  an eye” punishment.

In reality,   it removed all human dignity.

People attended  these executions not because they wanted to,   but because refusing to attend could  bring suspicion.

Children saw these   scenes.

Families carried the images  with them for the rest of their lives.

Between 1996 and 1999, the Taliban fully  enforced their version of Sharia law across   most of Afghanistan.

Crimes were defined  very broadly.

Theft, even a small theft,   was punished by cutting off a hand or foot.

There  was no serious investigation into poverty, hunger,   or false accusations.

A single accusation  could cost someone a limb or their life.

Adultery and premarital relationships were  punished by death.

The Taliban treated   accusations of “immoral behavior” as serious  crimes, even when there was no proof.

Men and   women accused of having relationships outside  marriage were often stoned or shot in public   squares.

Afghan officials and international  observers later confirmed that during Taliban   rule from 1996 to 2001, people accused of adultery  were regularly executed in front of crowds.

These executions were often turned into public events,  announced in advance so people would gather.

In 1999, one of the most disturbing cases occurred  at Ghazi Stadium.

A woman accused of adultery   was brought into the stadium during a public  gathering.

She was forced to kneel on the grass   while fully covered in a burqa.

A Taliban guard  then shot her in the head.

Thousands watched.

The   execution was filmed, and the video later spread  outside Afghanistan, causing global outrage.

For   the Taliban, this attention did not bring shame.

It reinforced their image of power and control.

The religious police did not limit themselves  to executions.

They enforced behavior at every   level.

Women could be beaten for lifting  their burqa too high.

But the punishments   often went far beyond beatings.

Stoning  became one of the most feared penalties.

The Taliban also revived punishments that shocked  even war-hardened Afghans.

One of the most extreme   was burial alive.

In February 1998, Taliban leader  Mullah Mohammed Omar personally ordered three men   to be buried alive for homose*uality.

The men were  placed in a pit.

Bricks were stacked around them   under a wall.

The idea was that the wall would  collapse and crush them.

According to reports,   the men were told that if they survived for thirty  minutes, they would be spared.

Against all odds,   they survived and were rushed to a hospital.

Their survival did not come from mercy,   but from failure.

The punishment itself  showed how far the Taliban were willing to go.

Taliban judges openly spoke  about such punishments.

They claimed that homose*uals should face only  two choices: death by stoning or death by being   crushed.

There was no discussion of rights,  no consideration of age, consent, or mental   health.

These punishments were meant to erase  people completely and scare others into silence.

The Taliban made little distinction  between criminals, political enemies,   and people accused of moral offenses.

All were treated as threats.

Even small acts could lead to death.

Women  suffered the most.

A woman could be accused   of adultery simply for speaking to a man or  being seen outside without a male relative.

Many were punished for things that were  not crimes anywhere else in the world.

Girls’ education was treated as a crime.

Schools for girls were shut down across   the country.

Teachers were beaten.

Girls who  tried to learn in secret risked being flogged.

The Taliban wanted women  to be invisible and silent.

People in Afghanistan lived in daily fear.

If  a neighbor accused you of a crime, even a false   accusation of stealing or “immorality”,  you could disappear.

Trials were quick,   with no lawyers.

Religious judges presided in  short robes, often without even writing a legal   charge.

Verdicts were handed down in minutes, and  the punishments were announced by loudspeakers.

Those waiting for execution had no real appeal.

Executed prisoners were killed on the same day.

By the end of 2001, the Taliban’s control over  Kabul collapsed quickly after the U.S.

-led   invasion that followed the September 11 attacks.

Their fighters abandoned government buildings,   courts, and prisons almost overnight.

The public  executions at the stadium stopped, not because the   Taliban had changed, but because they had lost  open control of the cities.

Many Afghans hoped   this marked the end of the fear they had lived  under for five years.

But that hope did not last   long.

The Taliban did not disappear.

Instead,  they retreated into rural areas, mountains, and   across the border.

From there, they began a long  and quiet war that would last nearly two decades.

During this period, the Taliban avoided large  cities and returned to tactics that were harder   to track.

They attacked at night, planted roadside  bombs, and targeted people they believed supported   the new Afghan government or foreign forces.

At  the same time, they continued to enforce their   version of justice in places where the government  had little reach.

This violence was less visible   to the outside world, but it was still deadly.

Entire districts in provinces like Helmand,   Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Ghazni slowly  slipped back under Taliban influence.

In these areas, the Taliban acted as the real  authority, deciding who lived and who died.

Human rights groups reported that the Taliban  set up what were known as “shadow courts.

” These   courts operated in villages and small towns, often  inside mosques or private homes.

There were no   records, no lawyers, and no witnesses allowed to  speak freely.

People accused of being government   spies, police informants, teachers, aid workers,  or simply critics of the Taliban were taken from   their homes, often at night.

Many were never seen  again.

Families searched for answers but were too   afraid to ask questions.

In some cases, bodies  were found days later on roadsides.

In other   cases, there was nothing at all, only silence  and rumors passed from neighbor to neighbor.

Punishments during this time were meant to stay  hidden, but some still became public.

In 2010,   a case shocked the country and  the world.

In Kunduz province,   Taliban fighters publicly stoned a young  man and woman accused of adultery.

The   couple had tried to run away together  to escape forced marriages.

Instead,   they were caught and brought before a Taliban  court.

Villagers were ordered to attend.

Stones were thrown until the woman died.

The man  survived but was beaten.

This was not an accident   or an isolated act.

It was a clear signal that  the Taliban’s methods from the 1990s were still   alive.

Even without official power, they were  willing and able to carry out extreme punishments.

As the years passed and foreign forces  began planning their withdrawal,   Taliban violence became more open again.

In  2014, as international troops prepared to leave,   the Taliban grew bolder.

In Helmand province, they  publicly hanged five men accused of kidnapping   at an open-air opium market.

Farmers and traders  were forced to watch.

The bodies were left hanging   overnight.

This was done on purpose.

It was meant  to remind people who truly controlled the area.

Taliban leaders openly stated that the executions  were meant to scare others into obedience.

For ordinary Afghans, daily life during these  years was filled with constant fear.

Many   rural areas became places where no one dared  speak openly.

People learned to avoid roads,   checkpoints, and even conversations with  strangers.

At any moment, the Taliban could   accuse someone of helping the government or  foreign forces.

These accusations did not   need proof.

Once accused, a person could be taken  away and killed without a trial.

Families often   fled their homes at night, leaving everything  behind, because staying meant risking death.

During this long war, many Taliban fighters  were also captured by Afghan or foreign forces.

Some were jailed.

Others surrendered.

In these  cases, their lives depended on who held them.

Fighters taken by government forces were  usually imprisoned.

But those captured by   rival Taliban groups or handed back  were often tortured or executed.

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban returned to Kabul  as foreign forces completed their withdrawal.

The   Afghan government collapsed within days.

Taliban leaders spoke on television and   promised forgiveness for former soldiers,  police officers, judges, and officials.

Many people wanted to believe this.

But almost  immediately, fear returned.

In the days and   weeks that followed, reports came in from across  the country describing house-to-house searches.

Taliban fighters went door to door looking  for people connected to the old government.

Former soldiers vanished.

Young men were  taken away for questioning and never came   back.

Some bodies were later found on roadsides  or in fields.

Others were never found at all.

As the Taliban settled back into power, they  began rebuilding the same system they had used   in the 1990s.

By late 2021 and throughout 2022,  they reestablished courts, prisons, and religious   police units.

The Taliban Supreme Court was formed  again, staffed almost entirely by male clerics   loyal to the movement.

These courts did not follow  modern legal standards.

Defendants were not given   lawyers.

Evidence was often based on accusations  or confessions made under pressure.

Trials were   short, sometimes lasting only minutes.

Once a  sentence was given, punishment followed quickly.

In November 2022, the Taliban made  their intentions clear.

The Supreme   Court announced a large group of public  punishments in Takhar province.

Nineteen   people were brought before crowds and whipped 39  times each.

Nine of those punished were women.

The crimes listed included adultery,  running away from home, and having   relationships outside marriage.

Taliban  officials described these punishments as   the result of “strict investigations,” but  no independent observers were allowed to   verify the cases.

The Taliban’s top religious  leader also ordered judges to fully enforce   punishments as they understood Islamic law.

The old system of fear was officially back.

Public executions soon followed.

In  December 2022, the Taliban carried out   their first known public execution since  returning to power.

In Farah province,   a man convicted of murder was brought  before a crowd of villagers and shot.

Hundreds were forced to attend.

Taliban leaders  approved the execution at the highest level.

The United Nations condemned the killing,  warning that Afghanistan was returning to   the same violent practices that had  shocked the world decades earlier.

The pattern continued in 2023.

In June, Taliban  courts confirmed more public executions.

In   Laghman province, an Afghan man convicted of  killing five people was sentenced to death by   shooting.

Taliban officials said the punishment  had been approved by the group’s supreme leader,   the successor to Mullah Mohammed Omar.

The  Taliban described this as justice and revenge   for the victims’ families.

Human rights groups  warned that such executions were being carried   out without fair trials and were meant  to scare the population into silence.

Behind these public cases were  much larger numbers.

Taliban courts   themselves released figures showing  the scale of punishment.

By mid-2023,   they claimed to have sentenced 175 people  to execution and 37 people to stoning since   taking power.

These numbers did not include  floggings and other physical punishments.

United Nations observers reported that in just  six months, more than 300 people were publicly   whipped.

Those punished included men, women,  and even children.

Some women were pregnant.

Some men were elderly.

The listed crimes  were often minor by any normal standard.

U.

N.

human rights experts later confirmed that  at least 274 men, 58 women, and 2 children   had been flogged in public.

Dozens more were  sentenced to amputation or death.

Almost all   of these punishments were ordered by all-male  courts.

Women were especially vulnerable.

Experts noted that women made up a large share  of those sentenced to stoning or execution,   often based on accusations of moral  behavior rather than proven crimes.

The   United Nations demanded that the Taliban  stop these punishments, calling stoning,   execution, and burial alive acts of  torture that violate international law.

Despite international pressure, the punishments  have continued.

Witnesses and local reporters   have described scenes that closely resemble  the Taliban’s first rule.

Executions have   taken place in public squares and mosque  courtyards.

Crowds of men are ordered to   watch.

Religious police patrol streets and  villages, stopping people to check their phones,   clothing, and movements.

Anyone accused of  disobedience can be detained without warning.

Some are beaten.

Some disappear.

Girls’  schools remain closed across much of the   country.

Women who appear in public without  full covering can be struck or humiliated.

The Taliban’s goal was never  just punishment.

It was fear.

Rokhshana’s killing in 2015 showed how absolute  that control could be.

She was only 19 years old   and lived in Ghor province, a poor and remote  area where Taliban influence was strong.

Forced marriages were common there, and girls  had little power to refuse.

When Rokhshana   tried to escape that fate with Mohammad Gul, it  was treated as a crime against Taliban rules.

There was no court, no defense, and no chance to  explain.

The Taliban decided her fate on the spot.

The psychological damage from these killings  lasted far longer than the executions themselves.

Villagers spoke of children waking up  screaming at night and refusing to go   outside alone.

Parents warned their sons  not to speak freely and their daughters   not to be seen at all.

Even elders who once  settled disputes peacefully were silenced.

The memory of Najibullah’s killing in Kabul still  hangs over the country as well.

For many Afghans,   that moment marked the start of a  time when law no longer meant justice,   and power alone decided who lived or died.

After the Taliban returned to power in 2021,  these fears came back fast.

Villagers now   speak quietly about people taken away  during early morning raids.

Sometimes   it is a former soldier.

Sometimes it is  a shopkeeper accused of selling the wrong   items.

Sometimes it is a woman accused of  breaking dress rules.

Many never come home.

Children have not been spared  either.

Reports confirmed that   boys were among those publicly  whipped under Taliban orders.

These punishments often happened in town  centres, with crowds forced to attend.

Today, fear moves quietly through  Afghanistan.

People lower their   voices.

They avoid eye contact.

They delete  messages and hide phones.

Women step outside   only when necessary.

Families warn  each other to stay invisible.

The   suffering is not always seen on video or  in headlines, but it is felt every day.

And as long as these punishments continue, fear  remains one of the Taliban’s strongest weapons.

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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.

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