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“When ISIS Leaders’ Wives Were  Executed, and the Footage Leaked!”   The rise of ISIS brought fear like the world  had never seen.

But behind the black flags,   the wives of ISIS leaders became targets  themselves.

Some were executed by the group   they once served.

Secret footage from inside the  caliphate revealed a hidden world of brutality   that shocked everyone.

Long before the world knew the name ISIS,   the ground for it was already being  prepared in Iraq.

After the 2003 invasion,   the Iraqi government collapsed almost overnight.

The army was dissolved, police forces disappeared,   and millions of people were left without  protection or jobs.

Violence became part of daily   life.

Bombings, kidnappings, and revenge killings  spread across cities like Baghdad, Fallujah, and   Ramadi.

In this chaos, armed groups stepped in and  claimed they could bring order through force.

By 2004, one of these groups was led by Abu  Musab al-Zarqawi.

His network later became   known as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

It was extremely  brutal, even compared to other armed groups   at the time.

After Zarqawi was killed in a  U.S.

airstrike in June 2006, the group did   not disappear.

Instead, it rebranded itself  in October 2006 as the Islamic State of Iraq.

The name itself showed its goal.

It no longer  wanted to just fight.

It wanted to rule.

From the very beginning, control was everything.

Fighters were watched closely.

Loyalty was tested   constantly.

Families were pulled into this  system on purpose.

Women married to fighters   were not treated as private individuals.

They  were seen as extensions of their husbands.

Their behavior reflected directly on the man  they were married to.

A small mistake could   bring punishment not just on the fighter, but on  his wife and children as well.

This early system shaped everything that  came later in April 2010, when Abu Bakr   al-Baghdadi took control of the group after  the deaths of earlier leaders.

At the time,   the group was weakened by raids and arrests,  but Baghdadi rebuilt it quietly.

He avoided   attention and focused on loyalty.

He believed  the biggest danger was not enemies outside, but   betrayal from within.

Because of this, punishment  became stricter, and trust almost disappeared.

Fighters were tested constantly, and even small  mistakes could lead to severe consequences.

As Baghdadi strengthened his grip, the fear  did not stop with the fighters.

It entered   their homes.

Wives of commanders were watched  closely because they lived closest to sensitive   information.

They knew where people moved, where  money was hidden, and who visited safe houses.

For   this reason, they were never left alone.

Families  were moved from place to place without warning.

Phones were taken away or checked.

Letters  and messages were controlled.

Neighbors were   quietly pushed to report anything  unusual, even inside the home.

Women were expected to say nothing and  notice nothing.

Speaking to the wrong person,   asking the wrong question, or showing  doubt could bring serious punishment.

Some women were questioned simply because their  husbands were under suspicion.

Others were blamed   if a fighter failed a mission or tried to leave  the group.

Fear became part of daily life.

By 2012, the war in Syria gave Baghdadi a  new opportunity.

The chaos across the border   allowed his group to expand without much  resistance.

Fighters crossed into Syria,   and families were told to follow.

Many women were promised safety,   religious purpose, and a better life.

But once they arrived, reality became   clear.

Movement was restricted.

Rules were  harsher.

Leaving was nearly impossible.

Homes became controlled spaces.

Guards,  informants, and constant suspicion meant   privacy no longer existed.

What felt like  protection at first slowly turned into a trap,   and by the time many understood it,  there was no way out.

In June 2014, everything changed overnight.

ISIS fighters stormed into Mosul,   Iraq’s second-largest city, and took control in  just a few days.

The Iraqi army collapsed and   fled.

Huge weapons depots were left behind.

Banks  were emptied.

Within days, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi   stood in Mosul and announced a caliphate.

This was not just a militant group anymore.

It now claimed to be a state.

Millions of people  were suddenly living under its rule, stretching   from northern Iraq into eastern Syria.

Raqqa, a  city in Syria, was chosen as the capital.

Power made ISIS more paranoid, not more  confident.

Leaders knew that ruling land   was different from hiding in the shadows.

They now  had offices, courts, prisons, and money systems.

Anyone with inside knowledge became a risk.

That included the wives of commanders.

These women were no longer treated as family  members.

They were treated as assets that could   turn into threats.

ISIS believed that secrets  leaked through households.

A wife could talk   to a neighbor.

A child could repeat something  innocent but dangerous.

Because of this fear,   normal family life disappeared.

To tighten control, ISIS expanded its internal   security branch, known as the Amniyat.

This group  acted like secret police.

Its members watched   fighters, questioned families, and searched for  signs of disloyalty.

By late 2014, accusations   spread quickly.

If a leader disappeared, was  arrested, or was killed, his family did not   receive sympathy.

They received suspicion.

During this period, several women married to   mid-level and senior ISIS figures were  detained in cities like Raqqa and Deir   ez-Zor.

Some were accused of using secret  phones.

Others were accused of contacting   relatives outside ISIS areas, which was  strictly forbidden.

Some were accused of   planning to escape with their children.

In ISIS’s  system, intention alone was treated as guilt.

Punishment did not follow any clear legal  process.

Decisions were fast and final.

Some women were held in makeshift prisons.

Others  were taken away and never seen again.

Executions   of women accused of betrayal began during this  time, but they were done quietly.

There were   no crowds.

No announcements.

The killings happened  indoors, away from public view.

Bodies were buried   without names or records.

But, between the end of 2014 and the start of   2015, something new and disturbing began to happen  inside ISIS.

Members started filming punishments   that were never meant for the public.

These  recordings were not like the videos ISIS released   online to scare the world.

They were meant to  be seen only by people inside the group.

These videos were usually short and poorly filmed.

They were made on basic phones, often in closed   rooms or empty buildings.

There was no editing  or dramatic music.

That alone showed their   purpose.

They were not propaganda, but proof  that punishment had been carried out.

Years later, after ISIS lost territory,  Iraqi intelligence forces and investigative   journalists began recovering phones, hard  drives, and memory cards from abandoned safe   houses.

Some of these devices contained  short video clips that had never been   shared publicly before.

Analysts examined the  files closely.

The dates, file information,   and locations placed several of these recordings  between late 2014 and early 2015.

Some clips showed women being punished or executed  after being accused of spying or betrayal.

Faces   were often covered or filmed from behind.

Names  were never spoken.

This was done on purpose.

ISIS did not want these women  remembered.

They wanted them erased.

Investigators later confirmed that several of  these women were wives of ISIS commanders who   had defected, been captured, or were suspected  of passing information.

In ISIS thinking, a wife   was a risk even if she had done nothing.

Killing  her was seen as a way to close a loose end.

As these clips slowly leaked years later,  confusion followed.

Many videos began circulating   online with false labels.

Some were from other  conflicts.

Some were edited or completely fake.

This made it easy to dismiss everything as a  rumor.

But specialists were able to confirm   that a small number of recordings were real and  matched known ISIS locations and timelines.

Taken together, these verified clips  showed that ISIS was killing from the   inside long before it began to collapse,  by the start of 2015.

By then, ISIS was being pushed back.

The long battle for the Syrian town of   Kobani ended in failure for ISIS in January  2015.

This was a shock.

For the first time,   the group lost a major fight in full view of  the world.

At the same time, airstrikes by the   United States and its allies increased across  Syria and Iraq.

Weapons depots were destroyed.

Leaders were killed from the air.

Communication  became risky.

Trust began to break down.

Inside ISIS, doubt spread fast.

Foreign fighters,  especially those from Europe and North Africa,   started questioning the leadership.

Some tried  to move to safer areas.

Others secretly planned   to leave.

This terrified ISIS commanders.

They believed defections could expose routes,   finances, and hiding places.

The  response was harsh and immediate.

Instead of focusing only on the battlefield, ISIS  turned inward.

Suspicion became part of daily   life.

Meetings were watched.

Conversations  were reported.

Families were pulled into   investigations.

Wives of foreign commanders  were seen as especially dangerous.

Many spoke   multiple languages.

Many had relatives outside  ISIS territory.

Some had lived normal lives   before joining and still remembered them.

In early 2015, several women married to foreign   ISIS commanders were detained in Raqqa.

Their  husbands were accused of planning to flee or of   losing faith in the group.

Some men were arrested.

Others disappeared.

Their wives were taken for   questioning, sometimes in the middle of the night,  sometimes in front of their children.

Detention   did not require proof.

Accusation was enough.

ISIS held what it called internal trials, but they   were not real courts.

There were no lawyers.

No  defense.

Decisions were made quickly by security   officials.

Once a verdict was reached, there was  no appeal.

Punishment followed immediately.

Later testimonies from defectors confirmed that  at least three women were executed during this   period after being accused of helping  their husbands or knowing about escape   plans.

Their names were never recorded.

Their families were not informed.

ISIS   did not want stories that could cause  sympathy or doubt.

As airstrikes intensified, many senior ISIS  figures were killed across Syria and Iraq.

These deaths created a new problem for the  group.

Widows of commanders were left behind,   and ISIS leadership saw them as unfinished  business.

These women knew too much.

Quietly, a new rule took shape.

Widows were not  allowed to return to their home countries.

They   were not allowed to leave ISIS territory.

In many  cases, they were told they would be reassigned in   marriage to another fighter or commander.

This was  not presented as a choice.

It was an order.

For many women, this was the moment they  understood there was no future.

Their   husbands were dead, but their punishment  continued.

Refusing remarriage was treated   as open defiance.

In ISIS thinking,  obedience was not just expected in life,   but demanded even after loss.

Grief was not  allowed.

Independence was seen as a threat.

In the middle of 2015, one such case shocked  even some ISIS members.

A widow, known later only   by a kunya, refused to marry another fighter after  her husband, a commander, was killed in Syria.

She   did not try to escape.

She did not speak publicly.

She simply said no.

That refusal was enough.

She   was accused of rebellion and executed.

Her death  was not announced.

Her name was erased.

This moment revealed that even women who followed  rules for years could be killed the moment they   stopped serving a purpose.

Widowhood did  not bring protection.

By 2016, ISIS was losing its grip  on Iraq.

The most important blow   came in Mosul.

In October 2016, Iraqi  forces, backed by coalition airstrikes,   began the operation to retake the city.

ISIS  was slowly surrounded.

Roads were cut.

Food   became scarce.

Electricity failed.

The city turned into a cage.

Fear inside ISIS leadership reached a breaking  point.

Commanders no longer trusted each other.

Every airstrike raised questions about leaks.

Every loss was blamed on betrayal.

Leaders   accused rivals of passing information to the  enemy.

The idea that someone inside Mosul was   helping outside forces became an obsession.

As some commanders tried to escape the city,   panic followed.

ISIS treated flight as the worst  crime.

Witnesses who later escaped Mosul described   executions carried out inside apartments  and empty buildings.

These killings were   fast and chaotic.

There were no formal trials.

Women linked to fleeing commanders were taken   away and killed quietly.

Some executions  were recorded briefly on phones.

By this stage, ISIS was no longer acting like an  organized state.

It was reacting out of fear.

The   system it had built turned against itself.

The  same rules that once enforced loyalty now fueled   destruction.

Families who had lived under strict  control were suddenly marked for death.

The wives of commanders became victims  of this collapse.

They were not targeted   because of the actions they took, but because  of who they were connected to.

As the siege   tightened and escape routes closed, survival  became nearly impossible.

In 2017, ISIS lost everything it had claimed.

Mosul fell in July after months of brutal   fighting.

Raqqa fell in October after a long  siege by Kurdish-led forces backed by airstrikes.

The so-called caliphate was finished.

The cities  that once symbolized ISIS’s power were in ruins.

Fighters were dead, captured, or fleeing.

Families were left scattered across deserts,   checkpoints, and broken towns.

As ISIS collapsed, the wives of leaders   and commanders tried to survive.

Some fled with  their children, walking for days without food   or water.

Many were caught by Kurdish forces  in northern Syria.

Others were arrested by   Iraqi troops while trying to blend in with  civilians.

Some were stopped at makeshift   checkpoints.

Others were found hiding in abandoned  buildings.

There was no clear path to safety.

For some women, the danger did not  end with capture.

Those intercepted   by ISIS fighters while trying to flee often  vanished.

Witnesses later said these women   were accused of betrayal or escape attempts.

Many were taken away and never seen again.

For those captured by governments, a different  threat began.

Iraq launched mass arrests and   trials for anyone linked to ISIS.

Courts moved  quickly.

Trials sometimes lasted only minutes.

Evidence was often thin.

In many cases, being  married to an ISIS member was treated as proof of   guilt.

Women were accused of supporting terrorism  simply by surviving alongside their husbands.

The legal system did not clearly separate victims  from participants.

Women who had lived under   control, fear, and coercion were judged as willing  supporters.

Some were sentenced to long prison   terms.

Others faced the death penalty.

Children  were taken away.

Families were torn apart again,   this time by courts instead of militants.

By the end of 2017, the wives of ISIS leaders had   lost every layer of protection.

ISIS was gone.

But freedom did not come with its fall.

Power   had passed from militants to states, and the cost  for these women remained heavy.

Between 2017 and 2019, the government  carried out hundreds of executions   for ISIS-related crimes.

On April 22, 2018, one of the most   notable waves of executions took place  at Nasiriyah prison in southern Iraq.

Thirty-eight people were hanged, including several  women.

Human rights organizations later confirmed   that some of these women were foreign nationals  who had been married to ISIS commanders.

These   were women who had lived in Raqqa, Mosul, and  other key cities during the caliphate.

They had   witnessed violence and, according to prosecutors,  were complicit in their husbands’ actions.

Trials were extremely fast and often lacked basic  legal protections.

Defense lawyers were limited,   and appeals were rare or nonexistent.

Judges  had little choice but to move quickly because   the system was overwhelmed by thousands of  cases.

In many instances, women were judged on   association rather than direct actions.

Some executions were documented by the state.

Video recordings and photographs were taken  to serve as legal proof that sentences had   been carried out.

A few of these images leaked,  creating rumors and speculation online.

Names of   the executed were often withheld, leaving families  and the public with only partial information.

This secrecy made it hard to know who exactly  had died and under what circumstances.

For the outside world, only fragments of the  truth were visible.

Media reports focused   on numbers and occasional images, but the  personal stories, the fear, and the suffering   of these women remained hidden.

For many women who survived ISIS and the battles   in Iraq and Syria, escape did not mean safety.

Camps like al-Hol in northeastern Syria became   their last stop.

These were sprawling facilities  surrounded by high fences and guarded checkpoints.

Thousands of families lived in cramped tents or  containers.

Conditions were harsh.

Food and water   were limited, medical care was scarce, and disease  spread quickly.

Families had nowhere to go,   and freedom was still out of reach.

Inside these camps, ISIS’s influence did   not disappear.

Former members and loyalists kept  the same strict rules and punishments alive.

Fear   became the way to control even the confined  spaces of the camps.

Between 2019 and 2021,   dozens of women were killed inside al-Hol and  other camps.

Knives were used.

Bodies were left   inside tents, often where other families could  see them.

These murders were usually carried   out by women or men still loyal to ISIS.

Many  victims were former wives of commanders accused   of betrayal or of disobeying orders, sometimes  years after the fall of the caliphate.

Some of the attacks were filmed.

These  clips circulated quietly among other camp   residents as warnings.

Children grew up seeing  violence around them, and older women lived with   the constant threat that a wrong word or  action could be fatal.

In October 2019, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,  the leader of ISIS, died during a U.

S.

military raid in northwest Syria.

For  the world, this seemed like the end of   ISIS.

For the women tied to the group’s  leadership, it changed nothing.

Even after Baghdadi’s death, revenge killings  continued.

Loyalists inside camps and former ISIS   strongholds targeted women who were accused of  betrayal, leaving them dead or severely injured.

Governments and authorities tried to restore  order, often arresting women and children and   processing them through courts.

The world might have moved on,   but for them, fear remained the constant  companion, just as it had under ISIS rule.

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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.

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