I thought about my colleagues who lived comfortably within the bounds of acceptable thought.

I thought about my students who had come to the university to learn to live successfully in Iranian society.

And I thought about myself, a philosophy professor who was supposed to love truth above all things, but who was terrified of where truth might lead.

I did not know it then, but that moment in the classroom was the beginning of the end of my old life.

I had opened a door I would not be able to close, and I had spoken words that would be reported, examined, and used against me.

I had set in motion a series of events that would cost me my career, my freedom, and my homeland.

But I had also taken the first public step toward the truth that would save my soul.

I closed the notebook.

I looked out the window at the mountains in the distance, still covered in snow, even though spring was coming.

And I whispered a prayer to a god I was only beginning to know.

I asked for courage.

I asked for clarity as I asked for help in finding the truth, whatever the cost.

I did not know if he heard me.

I did not know if my prayers were reaching anyone, but I prayed anyway because I had nowhere else to turn.

The days following that class felt heavy with anticipation.

I noticed small changes.

Fewer students in my classes.

Colleagues who used to greet me in the hallways now looked away.

The department secretary who had always been friendly became formal and distant.

I was being marked, separated, set apart.

I should have pulled back.

I should have been more cautious in my next lectures.

But I found I could not.

Something had broken open inside me.

I could not go back to pretending that questions did not matter.

that truth was whatever we were told to believe.

In my next class, a student asked about the problem of religious certainty.

How could anyone be certain their religion was true when so many religions existed? I could have given a standard philosophical answer about epistemology and justified belief.

Instead, I found myself saying that certainty should be based on evidence and reason, not merely on the accident of where you were born.

I saw several students write this down.

I saw others exchange glances.

I had done it again.

I had stepped over the invisible line.

The semester continued.

I kept teaching, kept pushing students to think critically, and kept asking questions that made some of them uncomfortable.

I knew I was being watched.

I knew complaints were being filed, but I could not stop.

The truth I was discovering in my private reading was spilling over into my public teaching.

The two parts of my life were merging whether I wanted them to or not.

At home, Mina grew more concerned.

She asked me repeatedly what was wrong.

She said I had changed, that I was distant, that I seemed troubled.

I wanted to tell her.

I wanted to share the burden I was carrying.

But I was afraid.

What would she say? What would she do? I could not risk it.

So I carried the weight alone.

I read the Bible late into the night.

I prayed prayers I was not sure anyone heard.

I wrestled with God in the darkness of my study while Mina slept in the next room.

Unaware that her husband was becoming someone she would not recognize.

I was standing at a crossroads and I could feel the ground crumbling beneath my feet.

The soon I would have to choose a direction.

Soon the choice would be made for me.

The old life was ending.

A new one was beginning.

Though I could not yet see its shape.

All I knew was that I had encountered something real in the pages of that Bible.

Something that demanded a response, something that would not let me go.

And whatever the cost, I could not turn away from it.

The weeks following that classroom discussion felt like walking on crumbling ground.

Nothing looked different on the surface.

And I still went to the university each morning.

I still taught my classes.

I still had lunch with colleagues in the faculty dining hall.

But underneath, everything had changed.

I could not stop reading the Bible.

It had moved beyond academic preparation.

I was searching now, truly searching, and I knew it.

Every free moment, I found myself returning to those pages.

I would tell Mina I needed to work on my research and then close the door to my study and open the Bible instead of the philosophy texts that lined my shelves.

I began hiding the book more carefully.

I kept it in my desk drawer under student papers.

When I read at home, I would put it away quickly if I heard Mina’s footsteps approaching.

This was ridiculous.

I told myself she was my wife.

But I was not ready to explain what I was doing because I did not fully understand it myself.

I cleared my browser history after searching for Christian websites.

I deleted emails from online bookstores where I had ordered more books about Christianity.

I felt like a criminal covering his tracks.

The irony was not lost on me.

I was a professor of philosophy, someone who spent his life in the pursuit of knowledge.

And here I was hiding books like forbidden contraband.

The Gospel of John became my constant companion.

I read it over and over.

In the beginning was the word in and the word was with God and the word was God.

These opening verses struck me with force each time.

John was claiming that Jesus was not merely a prophet or a good teacher.

He was claiming that Jesus was God in human flesh.

This was the central issue.

Everything else flowed from it.

If Jesus was just a prophet, then Christianity was simply another moral system.

Interesting but not unique.

But if Jesus truly was God incarnate, then everything changed.

But then his death was not just a tragedy, but a cosmic event.

Then his resurrection was not just a miracle, but a victory over death itself.

I wrestled with this claim night after night.

It seemed impossible.

God becoming human, the infinite becoming finite, the eternal entering time, every philosophical instinct I had rebelled against it.

It violated categories.

It broke rules of logic.

It was absurd.

Yet the more I read, the more I saw that this absurdity was precisely the point.

The Apostle Paul wrote that the cross was foolishness to those who were perishing, but to those being saved, it was the power of God.

The Christian message was not trying to be philosophically neat.

It was declaring something that could only be believed, not proven.

This frustrated me.

I wanted proof.

I wanted logical certainty.

I wanted to be able to demonstrate the truth like a mathematical theorem.

But faith I was learning did not work that way.

Faith involved trust, surrender, a leap beyond what could be empirically verified.

I started comparing specific passages between the Quran and the Bible more systematically.

I made charts.

I wrote out parallel texts.

I looked at what each said about the nature of God, the problem of sin, the path to salvation, the afterlife.

The differences were stark.

The Quran emphasized submission and obedience.

Paradise was earned through good deeds outweighing bad deeds.

Allah was merciful, but his mercy had limits and conditions.

You had to deserve it.

The Bible emphasized grace and faith.

Salvation was a gift, not a wage.

It could not be earned because the debt was too great.

Human beings were spiritually dead, incapable of saving themselves.

God had to do what we could not do.

That was why Jesus came.

That was why he died.

That was why he rose.

This concept of grace shook me.

I had been raised to believe that I could make myself acceptable to God through my own efforts.

Prayer, fasting, charity, pilgrimage, these things would tip the scales in my favor.

I was in control of my spiritual destiny.

But the Bible said I was not in control.

It said I was helpless, lost, dead in my sins.

It said that all my righteous deeds were like filthy rags before a holy God.

This was offensive to my pride.

I wanted to believe I was good enough.

I wanted to believe I could earn my way.

Yet deep down, I knew the Bible was right.

I knew that if I stood before a perfectly holy God, I would have nothing to offer.

All my education, all my good works, all my religious observances would be exposed as insufficient.

I would be condemned by my own conscience, let alone by God’s perfect standard.

And that was where grace came in.

Grace meant that God offered freely what I could never earn.

He offered forgiveness, acceptance, adoption as his child.

Not because I deserved it, but because Jesus had paid the price I could not pay.

I I found myself weeping one night in my study as this truth finally penetrated my heart.

I had been trying so hard for so long to be good enough.

And I was being told I did not have to try anymore.

I just had to receive.

I just had to believe.

But believing meant rejecting Islam.

Believing meant turning my back on everything I had been taught from childhood.

Believing meant becoming what my culture called an apostate, a traitor, someone worthy of death.

I was not ready for that.

Not yet.

The spring semester continued.

I noticed that some of my students had stopped attending my classes.

The class that had been 25 students was now 18, then 15.

Some dropped the course officially.

Others simply stopped showing up.

I noticed something else.

In the hallways, some colleagues no longer met my eyes.

Conversations would stop when I approached.

I was not being included in certain meetings anymore.

The department head stopped asking my opinion on curriculum matters.

One afternoon, a colleague I considered a friend came to my office.

He closed the door and sat down.

He looked uncomfortable.

He asked if we could speak privately.

I said, “Of course.

” He told me that people were talking.

He said there had been complaints from students.

He said I should be careful about what I said in class, especially regarding religion.

He said he was telling me this as a friend, as a warning.

He said he did not want to see me get into trouble.

I thanked him.

I asked what specifically had been complained about.

He shifted in his seat.

He said it was the general approach I was taking, encouraging students to question things that should not be questioned.

He said others in the department felt I was overstepping appropriate boundaries.

After he left, I sat in my office for a long time.

I knew what this meant.

I was being watched now.

My words were being reported.

I had moved from being a respected professor to being a suspect.

Then I should have been more careful.

I should have pulled back, returned to safer topics, stopped saying anything that could be construed as problematic.

That would have been the smart thing to do.

But I could not do it.

Something in me had broken open.

I could not pretend anymore.

I could not teach students to pursue truth while I remained silent about the truth I was discovering.

In my next class, we were discussing the problem of evil on one of the classic questions.

If God is all powerful and all good, why does evil exist? We looked at different philosophical responses, the free will defense, the soulmaking theodysy, the Buddhist denial of the problem altogether.

Then a student asked how Christianity answered this question.

I could have given a brief neutral summary.

Instead, I found myself talking about the cross.

I found myself explaining that Christianity claimed God had entered into suffering himself, and that Jesus had experienced evil firsthand, had been tortured and killed, that God was not distant from human pain, but had embraced it.

I saw several students writing this down.

I saw others looking troubled.

I kept talking.

I said that the cross meant God was not merely solving the problem of evil theoretically, but practically.

He was defeating it through sacrificial love.

When class ended, I felt exhausted.

I had gone too far again, and I knew it.

But I also felt a strange peace.

I was speaking what I believed to be true and there was freedom in that even as the consequences loomed.

That evening, Mina confronted me.

She said my father had called her.

He was concerned because I had not been to the mosque in weeks.

She said my mother was worried because I seemed distracted and distant when I visited.

She asked me directly what was going on.

I told her I was struggling with some intellectual questions related to my research.

I told her it was nothing serious, just the normal process of working through complex ideas.

She did not look convinced.

She said I had changed that I was not myself anymore.

She asked if I was having some kind of crisis.

I wanted to tell her everything.

I wanted to explain what I had been reading, what I had been discovering, how my entire world view was being turned upside down.

But I could not find the words and I was afraid.

What would she say? Would she support me? Would she report me? I did not know and I could not risk it.

So I lied.

I told her everything was fine.

I promised I would make more effort to be present with her and our families.

I said I would finish my research soon and things would return to normal.

She seemed to accept this, though I could see doubt in her eyes.

We ate dinner mostly in silence.

I excused myself early and went to my study.

I sat at my desk and put my head in my hands.

The weight of living this double life was crushing me.

I prayed that night.

I prayed to Jesus, though I was still not sure if I truly believed in him or if I was just hedging my bets.

I asked for wisdom.

I asked for courage.

I asked for a way forward that would not destroy my life.

But even as I prayed, I knew what I was really asking for was a way to have truth without cost.

And I was beginning to understand that such a path did not exist.

The final weeks of the semester approached.

I had to give final exams and submit grades and the university would then break for the summer.

I hoped that the break would give me time to think, to figure out what to do next.

But before the semester ended, I was called to a meeting with the department head and the dean of the faculty.

This was not normal.

My heart pounded as I walked to the administration building.

They were polite but formal.

They said they had received concerns from multiple students and some faculty members and they said my teaching had taken a direction that was causing unease.

They did not specify exactly what I had said or done but the implication was clear.

I was being accused of undermining Islamic values.

I tried to defend myself.

I said I was teaching students to think critically which was the purpose of a philosophy education.

I said I had not attacked Islam only encouraged examination of ideas.

I said everything I had done was in the service of pursuing truth.

The dean listened without expression.

Then he said that the university had certain expectations and responsibilities.

He said that academic freedom had limits.

He said that I should reflect carefully on my approach and consider whether my methods were appropriate for the context in which I was teaching.

It was a warning, a clear warning.

One more step and there would be consequences.

I left that meeting shaking.

I walked back to my office and locked the door.

I looked around at my books on my degrees on the wall, the papers I had published, the life I had built.

All of it was in jeopardy.

Now I pulled out my Bible.

I turned to the Gospel of Matthew and read the words of Jesus.

What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? I had been trying to keep both.

my career and my search for truth, my reputation and my integrity, my safety and my conscience.

But I could not have both.

A choice was coming and I knew it.

The semester ended.

I submitted my grades.

The campus emptied as students went home for the summer.

I had 3 months before I would have to return and face whatever came next.

I spent those summer months in an agony of indecision.

I read more.

I prayed more.

I wrestled with God in a way I had never wrestled with anything in my life.

I went through periods of certainty where I was convinced Christianity was true, followed by periods of doubt where I thought I was losing my mind.

I visited my parents.

I watched my father pray.

I listened to him talk about faith with such simple confidence.

Part of me envied that confidence.

Part of me wanted to return to it.

But I could not unknow what I had learned.

I could not unsee what I had seen in the pages of the Bible.

I read more deeply.

I read CS Lewis and his arguments for the Christian faith.

I read about the historical evidence for the resurrection.

I read testimonies of other Muslims who had converted to Christianity.

Each story both encouraged me and terrified me that they had paid a price.

Some had been imprisoned, some had been killed.

Was I prepared for that? I spent hours walking through parks in Thran, thinking and praying.

I would watch families together, children playing, couples holding hands, normal life continuing around me while my world was falling apart.

I felt isolated, alone with questions I could not share with anyone.

One night in August, I had a dream.

I was standing in a dark room and there was a door with light coming from underneath.

I I was afraid to open it because I did not know what was on the other side.

But a voice said to me, “The truth will set you free.

” I woke up with those words echoing in my mind.

I knew then that I had to make a decision.

I could not stay suspended between two worlds.

I had to choose.

And deep in my heart, I knew what that choice would be.

In August, alone in my study late at night, I came to a decision.

I decided that I believed.

I believed that Jesus Christ was the son of God.

I believed that he had died for my sins and risen from the dead.

I believed that salvation came through faith in him alone, not through my own works.

This belief was still fragile.

I still had doubts.

I still had fears.

But it was real.

I had crossed some invisible line in my heart.

I was no longer just investigating Christianity.

I was becoming a Christian.

But I told no one.

I did not know how to tell anyone.

I did not know what the next step was supposed to be.

So I kept my new faith hidden a secret between me and God.

I knew that when the fall semester began, things would be different.

I could not go back to teaching as if nothing had changed.

The truth I had discovered would affect everything I said and did.

I was walking toward a cliff and I could see the edge approaching.

The fall semester began.

I returned to the university.

I taught my classes.

I tried to be more careful in what I said.

I tried to stay within safe boundaries, but it was too late.

The damage had been done or people were watching me.

Now, in September, during a class discussion on ethics and moral philosophy, a student asked a provocative question.

He asked whether there could be absolute moral truth or whether all morality was culturally relative.

It was a standard philosophy question, one I had discussed many times before.

I explained different positions.

Continue reading….
« Prev Next »