It started in the middle of a broken country,  where laws didn t matter anymore, and violence   became normal overnight.

Out of that chaos in  Iraq, a group slowly formed that would go on to   shock the entire world, not just because of what  it did, but because it wanted everyone to see it.

It goes back to the moment everything in  Iraq completely broke down.

In March 2003,   the United States, along with its allies, invaded  Iraq and quickly removed Saddam Hussein from   power.

But what came after that was not stability.

The Iraqi government collapsed almost overnight.

Ministries were abandoned, prisons were opened,  and huge military stockpiles were left unguarded.

By May 2003, the Iraqi army had been officially  disbanded by the Coalition Provisional Authority,   which meant hundreds of thousands of  trained soldiers suddenly had no jobs,   no income, and no future.

Many of them kept  their weapons, and many of them were angry.

In cities like Baghdad, Fallujah, and Ramadi,  there was no real authority left.

Police forces   disappeared or stopped functioning.

Criminal gangs  took over neighborhoods.

Kidnappings, looting,   and killings became part of daily life.

Into  this environment stepped Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,   a Jordanian militant who had already  built a reputation for being extremely   violent even before arriving in Iraq.

Zarqawi had spent time in Afghanistan   in the early 2000s and had formed  his own small extremist network,   but Iraq gave him something much bigger;  an open battlefield with no rules.

By late 2003 and early 2004, Zarqawi had  established a group that would soon become   known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq after he pledged loyalty  to Osama bin Laden.

But even within extremist   circles, Zarqawi stood out because of how far  he was willing to go.

He didn t just attack   U.

S.

soldiers or coalition forces.

He deliberately  targeted Iraqi civilians, especially Shia Muslims,   because he believed that triggering a sectarian  war would completely destabilize the country.

In August 2003, a massive truck bombing hit the  United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, killing   22 people, including UN envoy Sergio Vieira de  Mello.

Then in March 2004, coordinated bombings   during the Shia festival of Ashura killed over  180 people in cities like Karbala and Baghdad.

By 2005, the violence had reached another level.

Suicide bombings became almost daily events.

Markets crowded with families, mosques filled  with worshippers, and even funeral gatherings   were targeted.

One of the most shocking moments  came in February 2006 when the Al-Askari Mosque   in Samarra, one of the holiest sites for Shia  Muslims, was bombed.

This single attack pushed   Iraq into a full-scale sectarian civil war.

Sunni and Shia militias began killing each   other in the streets.

Entire neighborhoods were  emptied as people fled or were forced out.

At the   height of this violence in 2006, thousands  of civilians were dying every single month.

Zarqawi understood that fear spreads faster than  any army can move.

When people are constantly   scared, they stop trusting each other, they  stop resisting, and society begins to collapse   from the inside.

He also started something new  that shocked the world at the time.

He used the   internet to spread fear.

Videos of kidnappings and  executions were recorded and uploaded online.

One   of the most infamous cases was the beheading of  American contractor Nicholas Berg in May 2004.

Then, in June 2006, Zarqawi s story suddenly came  to an end.

U.

S.

intelligence tracked him down   near Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, and carried  out an airstrike that killed him.

At the time,   many leaders believed this would break the group  completely.

Zarqawi had been the driving force   behind much of the violence, and without him, it  seemed like the organization would fall apart.

But what most people didn t realize was that  the system he built didn t depend on just one   man anymore.

The networks, the tactics,  and the mindset were already in place.

So, after Zarqawi s death, the group quickly  adapted instead of collapsing.

Later that   same year, several insurgent factions came  together and announced the creation of the   Islamic State of Iraq, often called ISI.

This was  an important shift because they were no longer   presenting themselves as just a terrorist  group; they were claiming to be a state,   even though they didn t fully control one yet.

A  man named Abu Ayyub al-Masri became a key leader,   along with Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, but their  control was limited and constantly under pressure.

Between 2007 and 2010, things actually  turned against them.

The United States   increased troop levels in what became  known as the surge under General David   Petraeus.

At the same time, many Sunni tribes  in western Iraq, especially in Anbar Province,   turned against ISI.

This movement became known as  the Sunni Awakening.

These tribes had initially   tolerated or even supported insurgents, but  they grew tired of ISI s extreme brutality,   strict rules, and constant violence.

They started  working with U.

S.

forces to push the group out.

By 2008, ISI had lost most of its strongholds.

Many of its leaders were killed or captured.

Attacks dropped significantly compared to the peak  years of 2005 and 2006.

For a while, it really did   look like the group was finished.

But beneath  the surface, something was quietly rebuilding.

In April 2010, a joint U.

S.

-Iraqi operation  killed both Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar   al-Baghdadi.

This could have been the final blow,  but instead, it opened the door for a new leader,   Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

His real name  was Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri,   and unlike Zarqawi, he had a very different  personality.

He had a background in Islamic   studies and had reportedly been detained  by U.

S.

forces at Camp Bucca, a detention   facility in southern Iraq, where many future  extremist leaders met and built connections.

Baghdadi didn t rush into the spotlight.

He  kept a low profile and focused on rebuilding   the organization from the ground up.

One of his  smartest moves was bringing in former officers   from Saddam Hussein s army and intelligence  services.

These men had experience in planning   operations, running security networks, and  organizing large groups of fighters.

They   turned ISI into something more disciplined and  more structured than it had ever been before.

Then in 2011, a major opportunity appeared;  the civil war in Syria.

What started as   protests against President Bashar al-Assad  quickly turned into a full-scale war.

The country broke into different  zones controlled by the government,   rebel groups, and various militias.

Borders  became weak, and large areas had no real   authority.

Baghdadi saw exactly what Zarqawi  had seen years earlier in Iraq; a power vacuum.

By 2012 and 2013, ISI began sending fighters into  Syria and building a presence there.

Eventually,   Baghdadi announced that his group would now  be called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,   or ISIS.

This move created tension  with Al-Qaeda s central leadership,   especially Ayman al-Zawahiri, who  opposed the expansion.

But Baghdadi   ignored him and continued pushing forward,  effectively breaking away from Al-Qaeda.

Now, ISIS was no longer just an Iraqi  insurgent group hiding in the shadows.

It controlled territory on both sides of  the Iraq-Syria border.

It had experienced   military planners, steady funding  through extortion and smuggling,   and a growing number of fighters.

Attacks started  increasing again in Iraq around 2012 and 2013,   including large-scale prison breaks that  freed hundreds of experienced militants.

The year 2014 is when ISIS went from  being a dangerous regional group to a   global shock.

In early June, they launched  a massive offensive across northern Iraq,   targeting key cities with speed and  coordination that caught everyone off   guard.

Their fighters moved quickly, using  a mix of surprise attacks, intimidation,   and local support in some Sunni areas that  felt neglected by the Iraqi government.

Then came the moment that changed  everything, the fall of Mosul on June 10,   2014.

The Iraqi army had tens of thousands  of troops stationed in and around the city,   along with heavy weapons and armored  vehicles.

But when ISIS attacked,   many units collapsed almost immediately.

Soldiers abandoned their positions,   left behind their uniforms, and fled.

Some  commanders disappeared without giving orders.

Within just a few days, ISIS had taken full  control of a city with more than a million people.

What they gained from Mosul was massive.

Banks  were looted, reportedly giving them hundreds of   millions of dollars in cash.

Military bases were  emptied, and ISIS captured U.

S.

-made Humvees,   tanks, artillery, and large stockpiles of weapons  and ammunition.

This suddenly transformed them   into one of the richest and best-armed  extremist groups the world had ever seen.

Just days later, another shocking event took place  near Tikrit.

Hundreds of captured Iraqi soldiers,   many of them unarmed cadets from Camp Speicher,   were executed.

Estimates suggest  around 1,700 were killed.

Then on June 29, 2014, Baghdadi made his boldest  move.

From the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul,   he declared the establishment of a caliphate and  announced himself as the caliph.

It was a claim   to religious authority over Muslims  worldwide.

Most Muslim scholars and   communities rejected this immediately, calling  it illegitimate.

But that didn t matter to ISIS.

For many young men watching from around the world,  this looked like something powerful.

A group had   not only survived years of war but had created  its own state, controlled cities, and challenged   entire governments.

Their propaganda pushed this  image hard, showing strength, unity, and purpose.

Foreign fighters started arriving in larger  numbers than ever before.

By some estimates,   over 40,000 people from more than 100  countries would eventually travel to join ISIS.

The group didn t just rely on military victories.

They built a system where fear itself became   their strongest weapon, and they used modern  technology in a way no group had done before.

Their media operations were highly organized.

Groups like Al-Furqan Media and Al-Hayat Media   Center produced videos that looked  more like movie trailers than typical   propaganda.

They were designed to shock,  to scare, and to spread quickly online.

One of the most well-known moments came in  August 2014 with the execution of James Foley,   an American journalist who had been kidnapped  in Syria in 2012.

The video showed a masked man,   later identified as Mohammed Emwazi, often called  Jihadi John, standing beside Foley.

The setting   was controlled, the message was clear, and the  video was distributed globally within hours.

This pattern continued with other  hostages, including Steven Sotloff,   David Haines, and Alan Henning.

Each video followed a similar   structure, making it instantly  recognizable and widely shared.

At its peak between 2014 and 2015, ISIS  controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria,   including major cities like Mosul and Raqqa.

This  meant millions of people were living under their   rule, and daily life became something completely  different from anything they had known before.

ISIS created its own system of government.

They  had departments for security, education, health,   and even taxation.

But everything was controlled  under strict and extreme interpretations of   their ideology.

They enforced rules through  a religious police force known as the Hisbah,   which patrolled streets and checked people s  behavior.

Men were required to attend prayers.

Smoking was banned.

Music was banned.

Even small  violations could lead to severe punishment.

Public executions became a regular part of  life.

These were often carried out in city   squares so that as many people as possible would  see them.

People accused of spying, resisting, or   breaking rules were executed in front of crowds.

Sometimes bodies were left displayed as a warning.

Women faced heavy restrictions.

They were  required to wear full coverings and were   not allowed to move freely without permission  in many cases.

Girls education was limited or   stopped entirely in some areas.

At the same  time, ISIS created all-female enforcement   units like the Al-Khansaa Brigade to  monitor other women and enforce rules.

Minorities suffered the worst treatment,  and one of the most tragic examples was   what happened to the Yazidis.

In August 2014,  ISIS launched an attack on the Sinjar region,   where many Yazidis lived.

Thousands of men were  separated and killed, often in mass executions.

Women and children were taken captive.

Many  of them were sold in markets as slaves,   with documents issued by ISIS explaining  how they could be bought, sold, or owned.

Entire families were torn apart.

Some Yazidi  women were passed between fighters multiple times.

Children were taken and trained as fighters,   often referred to as Cubs of the Caliphate.

These children were exposed to violence   at a very young age and trained to  become part of the next generation.

Despite all this, ISIS tried to maintain the  appearance of normal life.

They ran bakeries,   collected taxes, and kept basic services  running in some areas.

But everything   existed under constant fear.

People followed  rules not because they agreed with them,   but because the consequences of  breaking them were too severe.

By 2015, ISIS had turned from a regional force  into a global threat.

What made this shift so   dangerous was that they didn t just rely on  fighters traveling to the Middle East anymore.

They actively encouraged attacks in  other countries, either by directing   them through networks or inspiring individuals  who had never even set foot in Iraq or Syria.

One of the most shocking moments came in November  2015 in Paris.

On the night of November 13,   a group of attackers carried out coordinated  assaults across the city.

They targeted   restaurants, cafes, the Stade de France  stadium, and the Bataclan concert hall.

The attackers used guns and suicide vests,  moving from one location to another with   clear planning and coordination.

By the  end of the night, 130 people were dead and   hundreds more were injured.

It was one of the  deadliest attacks in France s modern history.

Investigations later showed that many of the  attackers had connections to ISIS networks in   Europe and Syria.

Some had traveled to Syria and  returned, while others were guided remotely.

This   showed that ISIS had built a system that could  plan and support attacks far beyond its territory.

Then in March 2016, another major  attack took place in Brussels.

Suicide   bombers targeted the airport and a metro  station, killing 32 people.

Once again,   links were found between the attackers and the  same network connected to the Paris attacks.

These were not isolated incidents.

They were part of a wider pattern.

But what made things even more worrying was  the rise of so-called lone wolf attacks.

These   were individuals who acted on their own but  claimed loyalty to ISIS.

Some used vehicles   to run over crowds.

Others used knives or  simple weapons.

In July 2016, a man drove   a truck into a crowd in Nice, France, killing 86  people during Bastille Day celebrations.

He had   no direct contact with ISIS leadership, but he had  consumed their propaganda and acted in their name.

This was the real shift.

ISIS had created  an idea that could travel without borders.

They didn t need to train every attacker  or fund every operation.

All they needed   was to influence people.

Through  videos, messages, and online posts,   they gave simple instructions and encouraged  supporters to act wherever they were.

For governments and security forces, this created  a huge problem.

You can track organized groups,   but it s much harder to predict when a single  individual will suddenly decide to act.

The threat   became unpredictable, and that uncertainty created  fear far beyond the actual number of attacks.

By late 2016, the situation had reached a  point where a large international coalition   decided that ISIS had to be pushed back  completely.

This coalition included the   United States, European countries,  and local forces in Iraq and Syria.

The biggest target was Mosul, the same city that  ISIS had captured so quickly in 2014.

This time,   taking it back would not be easy.

The battle  began in October 2016 and lasted until July   2017.

Iraqi forces, Kurdish fighters,  and coalition air support all took part   in the operation.

ISIS had prepared  for this moment.

They built tunnels,   planted thousands of roadside bombs, and turned  entire neighborhoods into defensive positions.

Fighting in Mosul was slow and extremely intense.

Soldiers had to move street by street, building by   building.

ISIS fighters often hid among civilians,  using them as shields to slow down the advance.

Snipers were placed on rooftops.

Explosives were  hidden in homes, cars, and even children s toys.

Drones were used by ISIS to drop small bombs from  the air.

It turned the city into a deadly maze.

By the time Mosul was fully retaken in July 2017,   large parts of the city were destroyed.

Thousands of civilians had been killed,   and many more were displaced.

It was a  victory, but it came at a heavy cost.

At the same time, another major battle was  happening in Syria, the fight for Raqqa, which   ISIS had used as its main headquarters.

The Syrian  Democratic Forces, supported by the United States,   launched their operation in mid-2017.

Just like  Mosul, the battle was slow and destructive.

ISIS   resisted until the very end, using similar tactics  of booby traps, tunnels, and human shields.

By October 2017, Raqqa fell.

This was a  major turning point.

ISIS had now lost its   most important cities.

The territory they  once controlled had shrunk dramatically.

The caliphate that had been declared with so much  confidence in 2014 was collapsing piece by piece.

By 2019, ISIS had lost almost all of the  territory it once controlled.

The final   stronghold in Baghouz, eastern Syria, fell in  March 2019.

But one key figure was still alive;   Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

He had not been  seen publicly for years, and many rumors   had spread about his condition, but he was  still considered the leader of the group.

In October 2019, U.

S.

intelligence located  Baghdadi in a compound in northwestern Syria,   near the village of Barisha in Idlib Province.

This area was far from ISIS s former strongholds,   showing how much the group had been pushed  back.

On the night of October 26 27,   U.

S.

special forces carried  out a raid on the compound.

As the forces approached, Baghdadi fled into a  tunnel with some of his children.

According to   reports from the operation, he was cornered  with no way out.

Instead of surrendering,   he detonated a suicide vest, killing himself  and the children with him.

The tunnel collapsed,   and the operation ended with his death  being confirmed through DNA testing.

For many around the world, this felt like  the final chapter.

The man who had declared   the caliphate in 2014 was gone.

The territory  was gone.

The group had been heavily damaged.

But the reality was more complicated.

ISIS quickly announced a new leader,   Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, showing that  the organization still had a command structure.

More importantly, ISIS had already adapted.

It had gone back to operating in small cells,   carrying out hit-and-run attacks, bombings,  and assassinations in parts of Iraq and Syria.

Without a central territory,  they became harder to track.

So even though Baghdadi s  death was a major moment,   it didn t erase what ISIS  had built over the years.

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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.

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