For 10 years, Ayatollah Ruolo Kmeni had shaped the fate of Iran.

But in his final 24 hours, the once powerful leader was reduced to a fragile patient fighting for every heartbeat.

While outside the hospital, the government quietly prepared for the moment that would shock millions of people across the country.

He was 86 years old at the time.

His health had been getting worse for years.

Doctors had already performed several medical procedures on him in the 1980s.

His body was weak and the stress of ruling a country through war and political conflict had taken its toll.

So by early June 1989, Kmeni was no longer staying in a regular residence.

He had been moved into a private medical facility in Thran where doctors could watch him around the clock.

The building had essentially been turned into a secure medical compound.

Guards from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controlled the entrances.

Security checkpoints surrounded the area and only a very small list of people were allowed inside.

The doctor leading Kmeni’s treatment was Muhammad Reza Marandi, a well-known Iranian physician who had already treated many high-ranking figures in the government.

Mandi was working with a team of specialists that included surgeons, heart doctors, and anesthesiologists.

These doctors had been monitoring Kmeni for months because his health had been declining steadily.

The most serious problem at that moment was happening inside his digestive system.

Tests and medical observations showed that he was suffering from internal bleeding somewhere in his stomach or intestines.

For a young patient, doctors might have more time to study the problem and plan treatment carefully.

But for an 86year-old man with a weakened body, internal bleeding can turn deadly within hours.

The bleeding slowly drains blood from the body and can push the heart into shock.

Earlier medical reports had already suggested that the bleeding might be connected to a tumor somewhere in the digestive tract.

Some doctors suspected stomach cancer or a related intestinal cancer.

Although the exact diagnosis was complicated, by this stage, Kmeni’s body had already become extremely fragile, he’d lost weight, his energy was very low, and even small medical stress could push his organs toward failure.

On June 2nd, 1989, the situation suddenly became more serious.

Doctors monitoring him noticed that the bleeding appeared to be increasing.

His blood pressure began dropping, which is often the first sign that the body is losing too much blood internally.

At the same time, his pulse started becoming unstable.

Instead of a steady rhythm, the heartbeat began showing irregular patterns that worried the medical team.

For elderly patients, these two signs together can signal the beginning of a medical emergency.

Low blood pressure means the organs are not receiving enough oxygen and an unstable pulse means the heart is struggling to keep the body alive.

The doctors quickly realized they could not wait any longer.

They made the difficult decision to perform surgery.

Operating on an 86-year-old patient in weak condition is always risky.

The heart might fail during anesthesia.

The body might not survive the shock of surgery.

Infection and bleeding become much more dangerous in older patients.

But in this case, doing nothing was even more dangerous.

Without surgery to stop the bleeding, Kmeni might die within hours.

Inside the hospital, the atmosphere changed almost immediately.

Nurses rushed through hallways preparing the operating room.

Surgical instruments were sterilized and arranged carefully.

Special monitoring machines were brought in to track his heart, oxygen levels, and blood pressure during the procedure.

Doctors also prepared blood supplies for transfusions, knowing that Kmeni might lose significant blood during surgery and would need replacements quickly to keep his body functioning.

Meanwhile, the outside world had no idea how serious things had become.

Most ordinary Iranians were going about their daily routines without realizing that their country’s most powerful leader was lying inside a hospital preparing for emergency surgery.

Only a small circle of government officials had been quietly informed that the situation had become critical.

The operation finally began late on the night of June 2nd.

The surgical team gathered around the operating table as the anesthesiologists carefully prepared Kmeni for the procedure.

Because of his age and his fragile health, even the process of putting him under anesthesia had to be done slowly and carefully.

Too much medication could stop his heart, while too little could cause shock during surgery.

Every step required precision.

Once he was fully under the anesthesia, the surgeons began the operation by opening his abdomen to locate the source of the internal bleeding.

The medical team worked methodically, examining the stomach and surrounding areas of the digestive tract.

According to later medical reports, the bleeding appeared to be coming from a serious condition inside the digestive system.

Doctors suspected that the cause could be a tumor or severe ulceration that had damaged blood vessels in the stomach or intestines.

For younger patients, surgeons can sometimes move quickly during operations like this.

But in Kmeni’s case, speed was not an option.

His body could not handle sudden stress.

The surgeons had to move slowly and carefully, controlling every small action.

As the operation continued, the team tried to remove damaged tissue and stop the bleeding wherever it was occurring.

At the same time, nurses and anesthesiologists closely monitored Kmeni’s vital signs.

Machines tracked his heart rhythm, oxygen levels, and blood pressure every second.

For a period of time, the operation appeared to be working.

The surgeons managed to slow the bleeding and repair the most dangerous areas.

Eventually, they closed the surgical site, believing they had stabilized the immediate threat.

Kmeni was then moved out of the operating room and transferred into an intensive care unit where doctors could monitor him constantly.

Even though the surgery had technically succeeded in controlling the bleeding, the procedure had pushed his body to the edge of its limits.

Major surgery places enormous strain on the heart, lungs, and kidneys, especially in elderly patients.

After the surgery, his condition remained extremely fragile.

His heart rate was unstable.

His blood pressure stayed low and his body showed signs of exhaustion from the long medical battle it had just gone through.

As June 2nd slowly turned into the early hours of June 3rd, the hospital became a quiet place of tension.

Kmeni drifted in and out of consciousness during the night.

Sometimes he appeared briefly aware of his surroundings, but most of the time he remained extremely weak and exhausted.

At first, the situation looked somewhat stable, but then Kmeni’s heart started showing signs of stress.

Instead of maintaining a steady rhythm, his pulse began to fluctuate.

The heartbeats became irregular, sometimes speeding up and then slowing down again.

This kind of rhythm disturbance can be extremely dangerous because it means the heart is struggling to pump blood properly through the body.

The doctors reacted immediately.

Medications were administered through introvenous lines in an attempt to stabilize the heart rhythm.

Nurses adjusted the equipment connected to him, increasing oxygen support and closely monitoring the numbers appearing on the screens.

Despite these efforts, the situation continued getting worse.

The irregular heartbeat did not completely stabilize, and the doctors began to see additional signs that his body was weakening further.

His kidneys showed reduced activity, a sign that the organs were no longer receiving enough blood flow.

His breathing became more shallow.

The combination of surgery, age, and internal illness was slowly overwhelming his body’s ability to recover.

Then, sometime in the morning hours of June 3rd, the monitors suddenly began showing alarming signals.

The steady rhythm on the screen changed into chaotic spikes and irregular lines.

His heart was no longer beating properly.

Within seconds, the pattern on the monitor showed something even worse.

The electrical activity of the heart dropped dramatically, meaning the organ had stopped pumping blood effectively through the body.

This was the first cardiac arrest.

The medical team reacted instantly.

Doctors rushed to the bedside and began emergency resuscitation procedures.

Nurses prepared injections while other doctors began performing advanced life support techniques.

Powerful medications were pushed into his bloodstream through intravenous lines.

These drugs were designed to stimulate the heart and force it back into a normal rhythm.

At the same time, doctors used defibrillation equipment and other emergency methods used in intensive care units to try to restart the heart’s electrical system.

These procedures are aggressive and physically demanding, especially for an elderly patient.

But there was no alternative.

For a tense period inside that hospital room, the outcome was uncertain.

Then finally, the heart monitor showed a small improvement.

For a moment, the doctors managed to bring him back, but no one in the room felt relieved.

The doctors knew exactly what was happening.

They were buying time, not saving his life.

After the first cardiac arrest in the morning, Kmeni remained in an extremely fragile condition.

Throughout the afternoon, doctors monitored the machines beside his bed as the numbers slowly worsened.

Then, another collapse appeared on the monitors.

The heart rhythm suddenly weakened again, far worse than before.

The electrical signals that control the heartbeat became chaotic and unstable.

Within seconds, the monitor displayed the terrifying pattern doctors recognized immediately.

Kmeni’s heart had gone into cardiac arrest again.

This time, the situation was even more severe than the first collapse.

Doctors continued their efforts for a period of time, refusing to give up immediately, but eventually it became clear that the heart would not recover.

At approximately 10:20 p.

m.

on the night of June 3rd, 1989, the doctors officially declared Roa Kmeni dead.

The information was immediately passed to the highest levels of the Iranian government.

Senior political leaders were informed through secure communication channels and emergency procedures that had been quietly prepared in advance were now put into motion.

The government understood that this was one of the most sensitive moments in the history of the Islamic Republic.

The news could not simply leak out slowly.

Instead, the government decided to announce it officially through national broadcasting.

Within hours, the announcement was delivered through Iranian state television and radio networks.

The message spread across the country almost instantly.

families sitting in their homes, workers in offices, and travelers listening to radios, all heard the same news at nearly the same moment.

In many cities, supporters of the revolution immediately began gathering in public spaces.

Some people cried openly when they heard the announcement.

Others walked into the streets trying to reach government buildings, mosques, or public squares where crowds were forming.

Inside Tan, the reaction was especially dramatic.

Thousands of people began moving toward locations connected to the government, including the hospital where Kmeni had died and other official sites linked to the revolutionary leadership.

Many people mourned openly, believing they had lost the man who had stood up against the monarchy and foreign influence in Iran.

At the same time, the country’s leadership moved very quickly to secure political stability.

The Islamic Republic had been built around Kmani’s authority and without him the system needed a clear successor to prevent confusion or power struggles inside the government.

Iran’s constitution gave that responsibility to a powerful clerical body called the Assembly of Experts.

This organization consisted of senior Islamic scholars and religious authorities who were elected but also heavily connected to the religious establishment.

Their job was to choose and supervise the supreme leader.

In theory, the process was clear.

But in reality, the decision was complicated because Kmeni had been a unique figure.

He was not only a religious scholar, but the symbol of the revolution itself.

Finding someone with the same authority was nearly impossible.

Within hours of his death, the assembly of experts gathered in an emergency meeting in Tehran.

The members knew that time was critical.

Iran had only ended the devastating Iran Iraq war the previous year.

A conflict that had killed hundreds of thousands of people and left the country economically damaged.

Any sign of political instability at the top of the government could create serious problems both inside the country and abroad.

The leadership needed to show that the Islamic Republic still had control.

During the meeting, several powerful clerics were discussed as possible successors.

One of the names that had previously been considered was Hussein Ali Montazeri.

Montazeri had once been publicly identified as the likely successor to Kmeni.

However, only a few months earlier, he had been removed from that position after serious disagreements with the leadership.

Montazeri had criticized certain government policies, including the mass executions of political prisoners in 1988, and this criticism damaged his standing among powerful figures in the government.

By the time Kmeni died, Montazeri was no longer seen as a viable option.

Other senior religious scholars were also mentioned.

Some members of the assembly even discussed the possibility of creating a leadership council instead of a single supreme leader, which would have meant several clerics sharing the authority that Kmeni had once held alone.

But many members believed that the country needed a clear central leader rather than a divided structure.

Eventually, attention focused on Ali Kam.

At that time, Kamune was serving as the president of Iran and had been a loyal supporter of Kmeni since the early revolutionary years.

He had also survived an assassination attempt in 1981 that left his right arm partially paralyzed, which had increased his reputation among revolutionary supporters.

Politically, he had strong connections with many key figures in the Iranian leadership, including the powerful parliamentary leader Akbar Hashemi Raf Sanjani.

However, Kam was not widely considered the most senior religious scholar in Iran.

In traditional Shiite religious hierarchy, the position of supreme leader was expected to be held by a highranking cleric known as a Marja, a scholar recognized as a top authority in Islamic law.

At that time, Kamune did not hold that level of religious rank.

Despite this, many members of the assembly believed he was politically capable and trusted by the revolutionary establishment.

During the intense discussions inside the assembly of experts, Raf Sanjani reportedly played a key role by arguing that Kamune had the support necessary to lead the country during a sensitive transition.

Eventually, the members moved toward a vote.

The assembly voted to appoint Ali Kamune as the new supreme leader of Iran.

This decision was historic.

It meant that a relatively younger political cleric would inherit the most powerful position in the Islamic Republic.

In the months that followed, constitutional changes were made that adjusted the qualifications required for the Supreme Leader, making it easier for Commune to hold the position.

The decision made during that emergency meeting would shape Iran for decades.

Kam went on to lead the country through multiple political crises, international confrontations, and major changes inside the Middle East.

But while the political leadership inside Iran was focused on securing the future of the government, something massive was unfolding outside.

Across the country, millions of ordinary Iranians were preparing to say goodbye to the man who had changed their nation forever.

The funeral of Rola Kmeni took place on June 6th, 1989, only 3 days after his death.

What happened that day in Tan quickly turned into one of the most extraordinary and chaotic funerals in modern history.

From early morning, enormous crowds began pouring into the city.

People arrived by buses, trucks, private cars, and even on foot from nearby areas.

Many had traveled for hours or even days from distant towns and villages across Iran.

The government had announced that the public would be allowed to participate in the funeral ceremonies and millions responded.

Estimates of the crowd size vary, but many reports placed the number at around 10 million people.

Some observers believed that number might have been even higher.

For comparison, that meant roughly one out of every six Iranians alive at the time had traveled to Tan for the funeral.

The streets, highways, and open areas around the city became packed with people.

People cried openly in the streets, beating their chests in traditional morning rituals.

Others held pictures of Kmeni above their heads while shouting prayers and slogans connected to the revolution.

When the funeral process began, the crowd surged forward toward the coffin carrying Kmeni’s body.

The coffin was wrapped in a traditional burial cloth as part of Islamic funeral customs.

Security forces tried to maintain order, but the sheer size of the crowd made control extremely difficult.

Many people desperately wanted to get close to the coffin.

Some believed touching it would bring religious blessing.

Others wanted to take a small piece of the burial cloth as a sacred souvenir.

This belief created intense pressure around the procession as thousands of mourners pushed forward at the same time.

Very quickly, the situation began to spiral out of control.

The crowds surged toward the coffin with such force that the security guards carrying it struggled to keep their balance.

The pressure from the surrounding masses grew stronger as more people pushed forward trying to reach the body.

Then the coffin fell.

For a brief moment, the body of Kmeni was exposed in front of the massive crowd.

Some people attempted to grab pieces of the burial cloth while others surged forward even harder, creating an extremely dangerous situation.

Security personnel and guards rushed in immediately to recover the body and pull it away from the crushing crowd.

Realizing that the situation had become impossible to control in the ground, authorities quickly decided to remove the body from the area by helicopter to prevent further chaos.

The burial ceremony had to be postponed because the crowd was simply too large and emotional to manage safely.

Later, once security forces managed to reorganize the situation, the burial was finally completed.

Kmeni was laid to rest at a newly constructed shrine located south of Tehran.

The site would later grow into a massive religious complex visited by millions of people each year.

Today, the tomb of Rhala Kmeni stands as one of the most important political and religious landmarks in Iran.

But even after the funeral ended and the crowds eventually returned home, the debates about his life and legacy never stopped.

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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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