Muslim Imam Kills Daughter for Converting to Christianity


I want to tell you a story of how I lost my only sister, my blood sister from my mother.

Her name was Parana and she died because she loved Jesus Christ.

I am telling you this story from a place of safety.

Now though safety still feels strange to me even after all this time.

There are moments when I wake up in the night and forget where I am.

I reach for Paruana in the darkness expecting to find her sleeping beside me like she did for so many years.

But she is not there.

She will never be there again.

And the way she died, the reason she died is something the world needs to know.

My father was an imam.

I need you to understand what that meant for our family, for our lives, for everything we did from the moment we woke until the moment we slept.

An imam is not just a religious leader in our community in Afghanistan.

An imam is everything.

He is the voice of God to the people.

He is the keeper of morality.

Like he is the one who decides what is right and what is wrong, what is permitted and what is forbidden.

And my father took this role very seriously.

We lived in a large compound with high walls.

This is normal in Afghanistan.

But our compound was larger than most because my father had three wives.

My mother was his second wife.

She married him when she was 16 years old and she gave him two daughters, Parana and me.

His first wife had given him four sons.

Uh his third wife had given him three more sons and two daughters.

So So we were many children in that house, but Parana and I only had each other in the way that mattered.

I need to tell you about Parana.

So you can understand what was lost when she died.

She was four years older than me, which meant that for as long as I can remember, she was the one who took care of me.

Our mother loved us.

I know she did, but she was often tired and often sad.

Life as a second wife is not easy.

Uh the first wife had authority over her.

The third wife was younger and prettier.

My mother existed in a strange middle place where she belonged to no one fully, not even to herself.

So Paruana became like a mother to me.

When I was small, she braided my hair in the mornings.

She made sure I washed properly.

She helped me memorize the Quran verses we were required to learn.

She protected me from our half brothers when they were cruel, which they sometimes were.

Or she took blame for things I did wrong.

She gave me her food when when there was not enough.

She told me stories at night to help me sleep when I was afraid.

Our room was small.

We shared a sleeping mat.

And in the winter, we shared blankets because there were never enough to keep warm.

But I loved that room.

It was the only place in the whole compound where we could whisper to each other freely, where we could be ourselves instead of the quiet.

Obedient daughters, we were required to be everywhere else.

Life in our house revolved around my father’s schedule and my father’s rules.

He led prayers at the mosque five times a day and our entire household had to pray at the same times.

He studied the Quran and the Hadith constantly and he expected his children to do the same.

He had strict ideas about how his daughters should behave, how we should dress, how we should speak, where we could go, who we could see.

We were never alone outside the house.

Never even to go to the market with our mother.

We had to wear full burka and we had to stay close to her.

School was permitted but only the girls school and only until we were 14.

After that there was no reason for more education.

We were being prepared for marriage and marriage did not require us to know mathematics or literature.

It required us to know how to serve a husband, how to keep a house, what how to raise children in the proper Islamic way.

I remember our daily routine very clearly.

We woke before dawn for fudger prayer.

My father would lead the prayers and we would all line up behind him, the men in front, the women behind.

Then the boys would leave for school and my father would leave for the mosque.

We girls would uh help our mothers prepare breakfast.

We would clean the house.

We would study Quran.

In the afternoon, we might have a few hours to ourselves.

Uh but we were always being watched.

The older wa wives watch the younger wives.

The boys watched the girls.

Everyone watched everyone making sure no one stepped out of line.

No one brought shame to the family.

Shame.

That word ruled our lives.

It was worse than pain, worse than hunger, worse than anything.

To bring shame on the family was the worst thing a daughter could do.

And what brought shame? So many things.

speaking too loudly, laughing in public, looking at a man who was not family.

I’m being seen by a man who was not family.

Disobeying, questioning, wanting anything beyond what was permitted to want.

My father used to say that his daughters were like glass, beautiful but fragile, valuable but easily broken, and once broken, worthless.

He said this to us many times.

He said that our honor was the family’s honor and if we damaged it, we damaged everyone.

He said it was his duty to protect us, to keep us pure, or to make sure we became good Muslim wives who would bring honor to whatever families we married into.

But despite everything, despite the walls and the rules and the constant watching, Parwana and I had moments of happiness, we had each other.

And that was not a small thing.

At night, after the last prayer, after our father had gone to sleep with whichever wife was his turn, that night, after the compound grew quiet, Parana would whisper to me, “Uh, we would lie on our mat in the darkness, and she would tell me her thoughts.

Not big dangerous thoughts at first, just small things.

Observations about our family, stories from her day, dreams about what life might be like when we were older.

She wanted to be a teacher.

She told me this many times.

She loved learning and she loved helping me learn.

She was patient and kind and she would have been a wonderful teacher, but we both knew it would never happen.

At our father would arrange marriages for us with men he approved of, men from good families, men who were proper Muslims.

We would leave his house and enter our husband’s houses, and we would live there until we died.

That was our future.

and we accepted it because we did not know we could want anything else.

I want to be honest with you about my feelings toward Islam at that time.

I was not angry at my religion.

I did not hate it.

It was the only thing I knew.

The Quran was beautiful to me.

Uh the prayers gave structure to my days.

I believed in Allah.

I believed that Muhammad was his prophet.

I believed that if I was obedient and modest and good, I would go to paradise when I died.

I had no reason to question any of it.

But there were small things that bothered me.

Even then, small questions I could not ask.

I wondered why Allah loved boys more than girls.

That is what it seemed like to me.

Boys could go to school as long as they wanted.

Boys could go outside freely or boys could choose what they wanted to do with their lives.

Boys were treated like they mattered.

Girls were treated like we were problems to be solved, burdens to be endured until we could be passed to husbands.

I wondered why my mother was sad all the time.

She prayed five times a day.

She fasted during Ramadan.

She obeyed my father in everything.

She wore hijab.

She was a good Muslim woman.

But she po was not happy.

None of the women in our compound were happy.

Um they were tired and sad and jealous of each other.

Was this really what Allah wanted for women? I wondered about heaven.

We were taught that paradise had rivers of milk and honey, gardens and fruits, beautiful things beyond imagination.

But we were also taught that men would have hurries in paradise, beautiful women created just to please them.

What would women have? Would my mother finally matter in paradise? Would she finally be first instead of second? Or would heaven be just like earth at with her watching her husband love some someone else? These were small questions and I felt guilty even thinking them.

I never spoke them aloud.

I pushed them away when they came.

But they were there like seeds planted in my heart waiting.

Parana had questions too.

I know she did, though she rarely shared them with me when we were very young.

She was trying to protect me.

I think trying to keep me innocent, but I could see her thinking sometimes, see her struggling with something in her mind.

And as we got older, as I turned 10 and she turned 14, she began to share more.

She would ask me what I thought about things.

Did I think it was fair that our halfb brothers could play outside while we had to stay in? Did I think Allah really cared if a woman showed her hair? Did I think our father loved us as much as he loved his sons? I did not know how to answer these questions.

They frightened me.

But I also felt relieved that she was asking them why because it meant I was not the only one who wondered.

When Parana turned 14, she had to stop going to school.

She cried the night before her last day.

We were lying on our mat and I felt her shoulders shaking.

Felt the wetness of her tears on the blanket we shared.

I asked her what was wrong and she said she did not want to stop learning.

She said it felt like dying.

I did not understand then.

I was only 10.

I still had four more years of school ahead of me.

Um but I held her hand in the darkness and I felt her pain even if I could not fully understand it.

After that, Paruana was home all day, every day.

She helped our mother cook and clean.

She learned to sew.

She was being prepared for marriage, though my father had not yet chosen a husband for her.

She grew more quiet.

The light in her eyes grew dimmer.

I missed the old parana, the one who smiled sometimes, who whispered dreams to me at night.

Our mother noticed too.

I saw her watching Parana with worry in her eyes.

One day, I heard her speaking to my father, asking if Parana could continue school for just one more year.

My father’s response was sharp and immediate.

The discussion was over.

Our mother did not ask again.

I think that was when Puana began to realize that her life would never be her own.

That she had no choices, no control, no future beyond what my father decided for her.

And I think that realization began to change something inside his hair.

That the compound where we lived was not completely isolated.

We had neighbors and sometimes people came to visit my father for religious guidance or to settle disputes.

There were workmen who came to fix things when they broke.

There were women who came to see our mothers.

And though we were supposed to stay away from these visitors, sometimes we saw them, sometimes we heard them talking.

One of our neighbors was an older woman named BB John.

She was a widow.

Uh which meant she had more freedom than most women.

She did not have to answer to a husband.

Her sons were grown and they gave her respect but did not control her the way my father controlled his wives.

She came to visit our mothers sometimes, bringing bread or helping with sewing.

She was kind to us girls, kinder than most adults.

BB John had worked for foreigners once before the Taliban returned to power in some areas.

She had worked for an aid organization, a helping distribute food and medicine.

She had learned some English.

She had seen how people lived in other countries.

And though she was careful about what she said, sometimes small things would slip out.

Comments about women who were doctors, stories about girls who went to university, mentions of ideas that seemed impossible to us.

My father did not like BB John.

He thought she had been corrupted by western influence.

He said the foreigners had poisoned her mind with their godless ideas.

Hagi told our mothers to limit their contact with her.

But our mothers liked her and so she still came sometimes less often but still regularly.

I remember one day when I was 10 or 11, BB John was visiting and she saw me reading a Quran.

She asked me what surah I was studying and I told her.

She nodded and then she said something I never forgot.

She said that reading was the most important thing a girl could do because reading meant thinking and thinking meant freedom.

Ducky.

My mother quickly changed the subject, nervous that my father might hear.

But I thought about those words for days afterward.

Reading meant thinking.

Thinking meant freedom.

What did that mean? What kind of freedom? I asked Parana about it that night and she was quiet for a long time before she answered.

Then she said that maybe BB John meant that when you read and think for yourself, no one can completely control your mind.

They can control your body, where you go and what you do.

Uh but your thoughts are your own.

This idea was both uh exciting and terrifying to me.

I had never considered that my thoughts were my own.

I had always assumed that I should think what I was told to think, believe what I was told to believe.

But maybe there was a space inside me that belonged only to me, where I could question and wonder and dream without anyone knowing.

Our lives continued in their routine way.

The seasons changed.

I grew older.

Paruana grew more quiet and more distant.

My father became stricter as the political situation in our area became more unstable.

There was fighting sometimes in nearby villages.

There were rumors of Taliban coming back to enforce their rules.

My father approved of this.

He said Afghanistan had lost its way, that people had become too liberal, that women had forgotten their place.

He said the Taliban would restore proper Islamic values.

I was afraid of the Taliban, though I did not fully understand who they were or what they did.

Uh I just knew that when people spoke of them, their voices changed.

Even my father’s voice, which was always stern and serious, became harder when he spoke of them.

When I was 11, my father stopped allowing me to go to school.

He said the school was teaching improper things, that the teachers were not following correct Islamic principles.

My mother tried to argue with him, but he would not listen.

So I joined Paruana at home and my education ended.

I cried for days.

I loved school.

I loved reading and learning.

I loved having somewhere to go outside the compound, even if it was just the girls school with its strict rules and covered windows.

I loved having something to do with my mind besides memorize Quran verses and think about housework.

Parana held me while I cried.

She understood.

She told me it would be okay, that we would find ways to keep learning on our own.

And she kept that promise.

She borrowed books from BB John who somehow always had books or we read them together in secret, hiding them under our sleeping mat.

They were simple books, children’s books sometimes, but they were windows to other worlds, stories about other places, other people, other ways of living.

It was through one of these book that we first learned about Jesus.

The book was not a Bible.

I want to be clear about that.

It was a story book, a children’s book about different religions of the world.

I do not know how BB John had it or why she gave it to Paruana.

Um maybe she thought we needed to know that other beliefs existed.

Maybe she was planting seeds on purpose.

Maybe she just thought we would find it interesting.

The book had a section about Christianity.

It talked about Jesus, about how Christians believed he was the son of God, about how he taught love and forgiveness, about how he died on a cross and rose again.

It talked about how Christians believed that faith in Jesus was the way to heaven, not good works or following rules.

That I remember reading that section with Parana and feeling confused.

We had learned about Issa in the Quran.

We knew he was a prophet, but this was different.

Christians believed he was more than a prophet.

They believed he was God himself come to earth as a human being.

This seemed impossible to me, blasphemous even.

Allah was Allah far above humans, completely other.

How could God become a man? It did not make sense.

But Paruana was very quiet after reading it.

L she read the section again and again.

I asked her what she was thinking and she said she was trying to understand.

Why would anyone believe something so strange? There had to be a reason.

We hid the book carefully.

If my father found it, we would both be beaten severely.

But we kept reading it, especially the part about Jesus.

And slowly, very slowly, something began to change in Parana.

I could see it, but I could not name it.

She seemed less afraid.

The She seemed to be thinking about something all the time, something big, something she could not share with me yet.

Looking back now, I can see that this was the beginning.

This was where her journey to faith started.

With a children’s book and a curious mind and a heart that was hungry for hope, she was 15 years old, living in a cage, watching her future narrow to marriage and children and a life of serving a husband she did not choose.

And into that darkness came a story about a God who loved enough to die, about forgiveness that was free, about hope that did not depend on being good enough.

I did not understand it then.

I was only 11 and I was not ready for such big questions.

But Paruana was ready.

She was desperate for something beyond the life she had been given.

and she found it in the most dangerous place possible in faith in Jesus Christ.

The change in her was gradual.

She did not wake up one day and announce that she was a Christian.

She could not.

That would mean immediate death.

Instead, she began to pray differently.

I would wake sometimes in the night and see her whispering to herself, her lips moving silently.

When I asked her what she was doing, she said she was praying.

But something about it seemed different from our usual prayers.

She began to be kinder, if that was even possible.

She was already the kindest person I knew.

Uh but something deepened in her.

She was more patient with our difficult half brothers.

She served our mothers without complaint.

She even spoke gently to the first wife who had always been cruel to our mother and to us.

And she began to talk to me about love, about how God loved us, not about how we needed to earn God’s favor through God uh good works and obedience, but about how God already loved us completely and perfectly no matter what.

This confused me.

Uh everything I had been taught said that Allah’s love had to be earned.

We had to follow the rules, pray the prayers, fast during Ramadan, wear the right clothes, say the right things.

We had to be good enough.

But Paruana was saying something different.

She was saying that God’s love was a gift, free, unearned, already given.

I asked her where she learned this and she said from thinking, from reading, from praying.

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