Cultural relativism, moral objectivism, divine command theory.

I tried to be balanced.

But then I said something I should not have said.

And I said that if there was no absolute moral truth, then we had no basis for condemning anything anyone did.

I said that Hitler and the Holocaust could not be called evil, only different.

A student objected.

He said Islam provided absolute moral truth.

I agreed that Islam claimed to, but I asked how we knew those claims were valid.

I asked what evidence we had that the moral commands in the Quran came from God and not from Muhammad’s own mind.

The room went silent.

I had said it.

Uh, the thing you could not say.

I had questioned the divine origin of the Quran.

Several students got up and walked out.

Others sat in stunned silence.

I tried to backtrack to explain that I was simply posing philosophical questions, but the words sounded hollow even to me.

The class ended early.

I gathered my things and went to my office.

I knew what would happen next.

I knew that what I had just said would be reported.

I knew that the university would have to act.

I was right.

Within days, a formal complaint was filed.

I was called to another meeting, this time with university administrators and representatives from the Ministry of Education.

I was accused of blasphemy, of spreading ideas contrary to Islamic teaching, of corrupting the minds of students.

I tried to defend myself, but my defense was weak.

How could I deny what I had said when multiple witnesses had heard it? How could I claim to be a faithful Muslim when my own words betrayed my doubt? They suspended me from teaching pending an investigation.

I was told to go home and wait for further instructions.

I was told not to contact my students or colleagues.

I was told to make myself available for questioning when required.

I left the university that day knowing I would probably never return.

I had lost my position, my reputation, my standing in the academic community.

Everything I had worked for was gone.

But something else was happening inside me.

As I walked out of that building for what I thought was the last time, I felt a strange lightness.

The double life was over.

The pretending was finished.

I had been forced into the open, and there was a kind of relief in that.

I did not know what would come next.

I did not know if I would face criminal charges, imprisonment, or worse.

But I knew one thing with certainty.

I believed in Jesus Christ.

And whatever the cost, I could not deny that belief anymore.

The pursuit of truth had brought me to this point.

Now I would learn what that truth was worth.

I went home and told Mina what had happened.

She was horrified.

She asked what this meant for us, for our future.

I told her I did not know.

She asked if the things they were saying about me were true.

She asked if I had really questioned Islam.

I looked at her and I knew this was a moment of truth.

I could lie.

I could tell her it was all a misunderstanding.

or I could be honest.

I told her the truth.

I told her I’d been reading the Bible.

I told her I had serious doubts about Islam.

I told her I was no longer sure what I believed, but I could not deny what I had been learning.

She stared at me as if I were a stranger.

Then she started to cry.

She asked how I could do this to her, to our families, to myself.

She asked if I realized what this meant.

I told her I did.

That night, we barely spoke.

We moved around our apartment like ghosts, each lost in our own thoughts.

The the life we had built together was cracking apart, and we both knew it.

The next two weeks were a blur of fear and uncertainty.

I stayed in our apartment waiting.

Waiting for what? I did not know.

Some days I thought perhaps nothing would happen.

Perhaps they would simply leave me alone if I stayed quiet.

Other days I was certain they would come for me.

Mina grew more distant.

She spoke to her family.

They were angry, ashamed.

They told her to leave me.

My own parents refused to see me when I tried to visit.

My father sent word that I had brought dishonor on the family.

I had never felt so alone.

Everything was falling apart.

And then early one morning, the knock came.

They had come to take me away.

The truth I had pursued had led me here to this moment, to this choice.

I could not take back.

As they led me out of my apartment, I thought of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, knowing what was coming, asking if the cup could pass from him.

I understood that prayer now in a way I never had before.

But like Jesus, I walked forward anyway, into the unknown, into the darkness, trusting that truth was worth whatever came next.

The knock on our door came at 5:00 in the morning.

I was not asleep.

I had barely slept in the two weeks since my suspension from the university.

I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling when I heard the sharp wrapping that made Mina sit up with a gasp.

I knew immediately who it was.

You always know when that kind of knock comes.

It is different from a neighbor or a delivery.

It carries authority and threat in the sound itself.

I got out of bed and went to the door.

Mina followed me, pulling her robe around herself.

I could see fear in her face.

Through the peepphole, I saw three men.

They were not in uniform, but I knew they were security agents.

They had that look, that bearing.

I opened the door.

Uh, one of them showed me an identification card too quickly for me to read the details.

He said my name as a statement, not a question.

He said I needed to come with them for questioning.

He said I should get dressed and bring nothing except my identification.

Mina started to cry.

She asked what this was about.

They ignored her.

I told her it would be all right, though I had no idea if that was true.

I told her to call my father.

I went to the bedroom and put on my clothes with shaking hands.

When I came back out, one of the agents was looking at my bookshelves.

He pulled out a book and examined it.

I felt my stomach drop when I saw which book it was.

The Bible.

I had been careless and left it visible among my other books.

He held it up and looked at me.

He did not say anything.

He did not need to.

He slipped it into his jacket pocket.

Then he gestured toward the door.

I kissed Mina on the forehead.

I could feel her trembling.

I whispered that I loved her.

And then I walked out of our apartment between two of the agents with the third following behind.

They put me in the backseat of a car with tinted windows.

We drove through Tyrron as the city was beginning to wake.

I watched familiar streets pass by and wondered when I would see them again.

We drove for perhaps 30 minutes.

I knew where we were going before we arrived.

Everyone in Thrron knows about Evan Prison.

It sits in the north of the city at the base of the Albor’s Mountains and people speak of it in whispers.

The car pulled through a gate.

The prison complex spread before me.

Concrete and wire and walls.

We stopped at a building.

I was taken inside, processed, my belongings taken from me, my wallet, my watch, my wedding ring.

They gave me a receipt as if I was checking into a hotel.

Then I was led down a corridor and placed in a cell.

The door closed with a metal clang that I can still hear in my mind years later.

That sound of finality.

I am that sound that says your life as you knew it has ended.

The cell was small, perhaps 2 m by 3 m.

Concrete walls, a metal bed frame with a thin mattress, a hole in the floor for a toilet, one small window high up near the ceiling with bars.

The walls were stained.

The smell was of unwashed bodies and despair.

I sat on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands.

This was real.

This was actually happening.

I was in Evan prison.

I knew what happened to people here.

I had read the stories, torture, forced confessions, people who went in and never came out.

I was alone in that cell for 3 days before the first interrogation.

3 days with nothing but my thoughts and my fear.

They brought me food twice a day, watery soup and stale bread.

I could barely eat.

I could hear sounds from other parts of the prison.

Doors slamming, footsteps, sometimes shouting, sometimes sounds I could not identify and did not want to.

I tried to pray.

I I tried to remember Bible verses I had read, but fear kept overwhelming everything else.

My mind would not stay focused.

I would start to pray and then panic would rise up in my chest and I could not breathe properly.

I thought about Mina.

I wondered if she knew where I was.

I wondered what my parents had been told.

I wondered if anyone from the university cared that I had disappeared.

On the fourth day, two guards came and took me from my cell, and they walked me down corridors and upstairs to an interrogation room.

It was a small room with a metal table and two chairs.

There was a man sitting in one chair.

He was middle-aged, wearing a clean shirt and trousers.

He looked like he could have been a bureaucrat or a teacher.

He gestured for me to sit.

He had a file folder in front of him.

He opened it and looked at papers inside.

He asked me to state my name, my position at the university, my address, basic questions.

I answered and my voice sounded strange to me.

Hoor from not speaking for days.

Then he asked about my teaching.

He asked about the complaints that had been filed.

He asked about specific things I had said in class.

He seemed to know everything.

He quoted my own words back to me.

I tried to explain.

I said I was teaching philosophy which naturally involved questioning assumptions.

I said I had not intended to attack Islam only to encourage critical thinking.

I said there had been a misunderstanding of my academic approach.

He listened without expression.

Then he asked me about the Bible that had been found in my apartment.

He asked why I had it.

I said it was for research for the comparative religion course.

He asked if I believed what was in it.

I hesitated.

He asked again.

I said I found some of the ideas interesting from a philosophical perspective.

He asked if I believed Jesus was the son of God.

I did not answer.

He made a note in his file.

The interrogation lasted perhaps 2 hours.

Then I was taken back to my cell.

I collapsed on the bed, exhausted, though I had done nothing but sit and talk.

The fear was more tiring than any physical labor.

This became the pattern.

Days alone in the cell, then interrogations, sometimes once a week, sometimes several times in one week.

Different interrogators, but the questions were always similar.

What did you teach? What do you believe? Who else shares these beliefs? Are you part of a network of Christian converts? I told them the truth.

That I had been reading and studying alone.

That I had not converted anyone else.

That I had no connections to churches or missionary organizations.

I do not know if they believed me.

The interrogations became harsher, the questions more aggressive, the pressure to confess greater.

Confess what? I asked.

Confess that I had abandoned Islam.

Confess that I had spread false teachings.

He confessed that I had betrayed my country and my faith.

They did not torture me physically, at least not in the way people imagine torture.

There were no beatings, no electric shocks.

But there are other ways to break a person.

Sleep deprivation, being kept in darkness, isolation, the constant uncertainty, not knowing what would happen next, not knowing if today would be the day they decided you were not worth keeping alive.

I began to lose track of time.

Days blurred together.

Was I in that cell for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, a month? I did not know.

There was no calendar.

The small window showed me if it was day or night, but the days themselves became indistinguishable.

I got sick.

The food was inadequate.

The cell was cold at night.

I developed a cough that would not go away.

I asked for medical attention, but none came.

I lost weight.

My clothes hung loose on me.

The worst part was not the physical discomfort.

It was the assault on my mind.

And the interrogators would tell me that Mina had been questioned, that she was afraid, that she blamed me for bringing this trouble on our family.

They said my parents were ashamed of me.

They said my colleagues at the university were relieved I was gone.

They said no one cared what happened to me.

I did not know what was true and what was lies.

That uncertainty was a kind of torture itself.

Yeah, I would lie on that thin mattress at night and wonder if I had destroyed my life for a belief I was not even sure I truly held.

Had I really encountered truth in those Bible verses? Or had I just been seduced by foreign ideas, by the arrogance of thinking I could judge between competing truth claims? In my lowest moments, I wanted to recant.

I wanted to tell them I had been confused, mistaken, led astray.

I wanted to promise I would return to Islam, renounce Christianity, impeach only what was approved.

I wanted to do whatever it took to get out of that cell and return to my life.

But then I would remember certain passages.

I would remember Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane sweating blood, asking if the cup could pass from him.

I would remember him on the cross crying out about being forsaken.

He had suffered.

He had been afraid.

He had been alone.

And somehow that gave me strength.

Not much, just enough.

Enough to get through another day.

Enough to withstand another interrogation.

Enough to hold on to faith by my fingernails.

There was one interrogation that stands out in my memory above all others.

It was perhaps 2 months into my imprisonment, though I cannot be certain.

A new interrogator came.

He was younger than the others.

He seemed almost sympathetic.

He asked me to explain what I believed.

Not accusingly, but genuinely.

So I told him.

I told him about grace.

One about how I had spent my life trying to earn God’s approval and never feeling worthy.

about how the message of Jesus offered acceptance I did not have to earn.

He listened.

When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.

Then he said something I did not expect.

He said he could understand the appeal.

He said it was easier to believe in a God who simply forgave rather than a God who demanded perfect obedience.

But then he said that easy was not the same as true.

And he said that grace without justice was not really grace at all, just sentimentality.

He said that Islam’s teaching was harder but more honest about human nature and divine righteousness.

I thought about his words for days afterward.

Was he right? Was I just taking the easy path? Was I believing what I wanted to be true rather than what actually was true? I wrestled with this question in that cell more deeply than I had ever wrestled with anything in my comfortable office at the university.

This was not academic anymore.

This was my life, my soul.

And in that wrestling, something happened.

I cannot fully explain it.

I was lying on my bed one night, unable to sleep.

my mind going in circles of doubt and fear.

And suddenly there was a presence.

I did not see anything.

I did not hear an audible voice.

But I knew with a certainty that went beyond reason that I was not alone in that cell.

It was Jesus.

I cannot prove it.

I cannot defend it philosophically.

But I knew it was him.

And in that moment, I felt a peace that made no sense given my circumstances.

A peace that, as the Bible says, passes understanding.

I whispered into the darkness.

I said I believed.

I said I was sorry for doubting.

I said I was afraid.

I said I did not know what would happen to me.

And in that moment, I felt more than thought a response.

You are mine.

I am with you.

Do not be afraid.

The peace did not last.

The fear came back.

The doubts returned.

But something fundamental had changed.

And I had encountered Christ not just as an idea in a book, but as a living presence.

That encounter became the anchor I held to in all the days that followed.

The interrogations continued, but my answers changed.

I stopped trying to hide what I believed.

I stopped trying to protect myself with careful words.

When they asked if I believed in Jesus, I said yes.

When they asked if I had rejected Islam, I said I believed Islam was mistaken about who Jesus was.

And I knew this honesty would likely make things worse for me.

But I had moved beyond calculation.

I had reached a place where the only thing that mattered was being truthful, whatever the cost.

The interrogator seemed almost frustrated by this change in me.

He said I was making things difficult for myself.

He said if I would just recant, show remorse, promise to return to the true faith, they might be lenient.

I told him I could not do that.

He he asked why I would throw my life away for a foreign religion.

I told him Christianity was not foreign, that it was older than Islam, that Jesus had lived and died and risen in the Middle East, not in Europe.

He did not want to hear this.

After that interrogation, I was put in isolation, a smaller cell, completely dark.

I had no idea how long I was kept there.

A day, a week? Time ceased to have meaning.

Food came at irregular intervals through a slot in the door.

I could not tell if it was morning or night.

I began to lose my grip on reality.

In that darkness, I prayed.

I recited every Bible verse I could remember.

I sang hymns I had found online when I was first researching Christianity.

My voice sounded strange in that dark space, but it gave me something to hold on to, a reminder that I was still human, still alive, still myself.

When they finally took me out of isolation and returned me to my regular cell, the small window seemed like a blessing from heaven.

I could see a patch of sky.

I could tell day from night.

I wept with gratitude for this tiny mercy.

The months continued.

The interrogations became less frequent.

I settled into a grim routine.

Wake, eat, wait, sleep, sometimes pray, sometimes doubt, sometimes just exist.

Hour by hour, day by day.

I learned later that I had been in Evan prison for nearly a year.

12 months of my life spent in that cell in those interrogations, in that darkness.

My case had been reviewed by religious authorities.

They had debated what to do with me.

Some wanted to make an example of me.

Others thought I was not important enough to bother with.

In the end, I was released on a technicality.

There was not quite enough evidence to convict me of crimes serious enough to warrant continued imprisonment, but I was not free.

My teaching position was permanently revoked.

I was required to report regularly to authorities.

I was under surveillance and I was given a clear message.

One more step out of line and I would be back in that cell or worse.

eyes.

One morning without warning, the guards came and told me I was being released.

I could barely process the information.

They gave me back my belongings, though my wedding ring was missing.

They gave me papers to sign.

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