Today’s testimony comes from a brother in Pakistan.
A man who once served as a brutal and wicked judge in Lahore.
Clothed in the black robe of authority, he sentenced many Christians to death driven by a deep hatred for their faith.
But his life changed dramatically when Jesus arrested his heart, turning him from a path of cruelty to one of redemption.
He carries a powerful message for all of us and I urge you to watch until the end.
This is a testimony you won’t want to miss.
Listen and be blessed.
My name was once justice Tariq Abdullah Sha and I was one of the most feared judges in Pakistan’s judicial system.
Today I am Timothy Sha, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And this is my testimony.
As I share this story with you, my body still trembles, not from fear, but from the overwhelming grace that saved me from the darkness I once championed.
For 23 years, I served in Pakistan’s courts, the last 12 as a senior judge in Lahore’s district courts.
I was known for my unwavering application of what we call justice, particularly in cases involving blasphemy and apostasy.
The irony of that word justice haunts me now.
how blind I was to think that what I dispensed from my bench had anything to do with true justice.
I came from a family of legal scholars and clerics.
My father Abdullah Sha was a respected Islamic scholar who had memorized the entire Quran by age 14.
My grandfather served as a kadi under British rule.
The path of religious law was not just my career.
It was my inheritance, my identity, my pride.
I believed with every fiber of my being that I was doing Allah’s work, protecting the faith from corruption and blasphemy.
My reputation was built on the strict interpretation of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, particularly section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code.
I took pride in never showing leniency in such cases.
The Christians, Ahmadis, and even Muslims accused of blasphemy who stood before me found no mercy in my court.
I saw myself as a warrior of faith, a guardian of Islam’s honor.
How many lives did I destroy with my verdicts? The exact number escapes me, but I know it was in the hundreds.
Each signature on those death sentences or life imprisonment orders felt like a victory for righteousness.
The Christians especially drew my eye.
I saw them as a remnant of colonial influence, a cancer that needed to be excised from our pure Islamic Republic.
When they stood before me, often poor, uneducated laborers or brick kiln workers, I felt no compassion.
Their tears, their pleas of innocence, the wailing of their families in the gallery meant nothing to me.
I had trained myself to see them not as human beings, but as threats to the divine order I was sworn to protect.
My wife, Asa, would sometimes express discomfort at the dinner table when news of my verdicts made headlines.
She never directly challenged me that wasn’t her way, but I could see questions in her eyes.
Our three children grew up knowing their father as a pillar of Islamic justice.
Though I noticed how my eldest daughter, Fatima, would grow quiet whenever her Christian classmates were mentioned.
I dismissed these small moments of doubt as weakness, the influence of an increasingly liberal world trying to soften our religious resolve.
The case that would change everything began like hundreds of others.
It was a humid August morning in 2018 when the file of the MSI family first crossed my desk.
Seven members of an extended Christian family from a village outside Lahore had been accused of blasphemy after a dispute over water access at a local well.
The Muslim landowner claimed they had made derogatory remarks about the prophet Muhammad when told they couldn’t use the wellreserved for Muslims.
It was a familiar story, one I had heard countless variations of throughout my career.
The evidence was thin.
It always was in these cases.
The accuser’s testimonies contradicted each other on key details.
There were no independent witnesses.
The defense lawyer, a nervous young man who knew the danger of defending blasphemy cases too vigorously, presented evidence that the accusation arose from a property dispute.
The landowner had been trying to force the Christian families off land they had farmed for generations.
But none of this mattered to me.
An accusation of blasphemy had been made, and in my court, that was usually enough.
I studied the accused as they stood in the dock.
Samuel Masi, a 60-year-old patriarch with calloused hands that spoke of a lifetime of manual labor.
His two adult sons, Daniel and Thomas, Daniel’s wife, Ruth, and three teenage cousins, who had been at the well that day.
They stood with the particular posture I had seen so many times, shoulders bent, not just from physical labor, but from the weight of knowing their fate was already sealed.
Their eyes held that mixture of fear and resignation that I had once interpreted as guilt, but now understand as the look of the condemned innocent.
The trial proceeded over several weeks.
Each day I watched the gallery fill with two distinct groups.
The Christians who came to support the accused sitting silent and fearful and the Muslim crowds who came to ensure justice was done.
Their angry murmurss rising whenever the defense spoke.
Outside the courthouse, larger crowds gathered, chanting for death to the blasphemers.
I felt empowered by their presence, validated in my mission.
The prosecution’s case was built on emotion rather than evidence.
The main witness, the landowner, Muhammad Ashra, gave a passionate account of the supposed blasphemy, his voice rising to near hysteria as he described the words allegedly spoken against the prophet.
His two workers who claimed to have witnessed the event gave testimonies that differed in crucial details.
One said it happened in the morning, the other in the evening.
One claimed Samuel Masi had spoken the blasphemous words.
The other said it was his son Daniel.
In any other type of case, such inconsistencies would have been grounds for dismissal.
but blasphemy cases operated by different rules, unwritten but understood by everyone in that courtroom.
The defense lawyer tried to point out these contradictions, but I cut him off repeatedly.
I had already made up my mind.
These Christians had been accused, and in the charged atmosphere of Pakistan’s religious politics, that was enough.
I remember feeling particularly irritated when the lawyer presented documents showing that the land dispute had been ongoing for 3 years with multiple attempts by Ashraf to force the Christian families out.
I dismissed this as irrelevant to the matter at hand.
During the trial, I noticed things I had trained myself to ignore in previous cases.
Ruth Massie’s hands trembled so violently she could barely hold the water glass offered to her.
One of the teenage boys, he couldn’t have been more than 15, kept looking at his mother in the gallery, tears streaming down both their faces.
Samuel Mi’s lips moved in what I now recognize as silent prayer throughout the proceedings.
At the time I saw it as further evidence of their Christian obstinacy.
The night before I was to deliver my verdict, I felt a strange restlessness.
I had already written my judgment.
Guilty on all counts, death sentence for the adults, imprisonment for the minors until they reached adulthood.
Then their sentences would be converted to death as well.
It was harsher than even the prosecution had requested, but I wanted to send a message.
As I reviewed the judgment in my study at home, Asa brought me tea.
She looked at the papers on my desk and asked simply if I was certain.
I responded with irritation that certainty was the foundation of justice.
She left without another word, but I noticed her pause at the door as if wanting to say something more.
That night, I dreamed of a courtroom where I stood in the dock while faceless figures pronounced judgment on me.
I woke in a cold sweat but dismissed it as the stress of the high-profile case.
The next morning, August 23rd, a date forever seared in my memory, I arrived at the courthouse early.
My courtroom was scheduled to open at 9, and I wanted time to prepare myself for what I knew would be a dramatic day.
The morning newspapers were full of speculation about my verdict.
Religious parties had issued statements praising my track record and expecting another blow against blasphemy.
The international human rights organizations had sent letters urging judicial fairness, letters I had thrown away unread.
As I put on my judicial robes that morning, I felt the weight of expectation, the pride of being Islam’s defender in this judicial jihad.
I entered my chambers at 7:30 a.
m.
, 2 hours before the court session was to begin.
The room was quiet, lit by the early morning sun streaming through the tall windows.
I sat at my desk and opened the file one more time, looking at the photographs of the accused.
Something I had never done before compelled me to really look at their faces, not as criminals, but as I couldn’t complete the thought.
I pushed the feeling aside and began reviewing my written judgment.
The words on the pages seemed particularly harsh in the morning light.
I had written about the necessity of protecting Islam from all threats, about making examples of those who dare disrespect the prophet.
I had cited numerous religious texts and previous judgments.
It was, I thought, one of my most comprehensive and decisive judgments.
It would be published in law journals studied by future generations of Islamic legal scholars.
My legacy was being cemented with each paragraph.
As I read, the strangest sensation began to creep over me.
The room seemed to grow warmer, though the air conditioning was running.
The words on the page began to blur, not from any problem with my vision, but as if the very letters were shifting.
I rubbed my eyes, attributing it to fatigue.
The case had consumed my thoughts for weeks, and I had slept poorly, but the sensation grew stronger.
Then, at approximately 8:15 a.
m.
, everything changed.
I cannot fully describe what happened next in terms that would make sense to those who haven’t experienced it.
The room didn’t change physically, yet everything was different.
The very air seemed to thicken with a presence I had never encountered.
My initial thought was that I was having a medical emergency, a stroke perhaps.
But my mind was crystal clear, more clear than it had ever been.
What happened in that room would shatter everything I believed, everything I was, everything I had built my life upon.
the 23 years of verdicts, the hundreds of lives I had destroyed in the name of divine justice, the absolute certainty with which I had wielded my authority, all of it would crumble in the next few moments.
But to understand what happened, to truly grasp the magnitude of that moment, I need to explain what came next.
when the very foundations of my existence were shaken by an encounter I neither sought nor could have imagined.
The pride I had felt putting on my robes that morning.
The satisfaction I had anticipated in delivering another decisive blow for Islam.
The reputation I had built as an unwavering defender of the faith.
All of it was about to be exposed as darkness masquerading as light.
And the seven Christians waiting in the detention center below the courthouse, preparing themselves for what they believed would be their death sentences would become the unlikely catalysts for a transformation that would cost me everything I had once held dear and give me everything I had never known I needed.
The presence in my chambers that morning was unlike anything I had experienced in my 54 years of life.
It wasn’t merely that someone had entered the room.
It was as if reality itself had shifted, as if I was suddenly seeing everything through new eyes, or perhaps seeing truly for the first time.
I remained frozen in my chair, my hand still holding the pen I had been using to make final notes on the judgment.
The temperature in the room seemed to fluctuate between extreme heat and penetrating cold.
My body began trembling, but not from fear.
It was something deeper, more fundamental, as if every cell in my body was responding to something my mind couldn’t yet comprehend.
Then I saw him.
I struggle even now to put into words what I saw.
It wasn’t a vision in the way we typically understand visions.
Hazy, dreamlike, uncertain.
This was more real than the desk in front of me, more solid than the walls around me.
A figure of indescribable light stood before me.
But it wasn’t light that hurt the eyes.
It was light that seemed to expose everything that penetrated not just the room, but into the very depths of my being.
Every hidden thought, every justified cruelty, every moment of proud condemnation stood naked and exposed in that light.
I knew immediately who this was, though every part of my theological training screamed against the possibility.
This was Jesus, not Issa, as I had understood him from Islamic teaching, not merely a prophet, but something else entirely.
The knowledge came not through reasoning but through a recognition that bypassed my mind entirely.
It was as if my soul knew him, had always known him despite my lifetime of denial.
His eyes, I cannot forget his eyes.
They held such sorrow, such love, such terrible knowledge.
In them I saw reflected every person I had condemned, every life I had destroyed, every family I had torn apart.
But it wasn’t accusation I saw there.
It was grief.
The kind of grief a parent might have for a lost child.
I realized with a shock that would reverberate through the coming months that his grief was not just for my victims but for me.
Without words, though somehow I understood perfectly, he began to show me things.
The room around me faded, and I saw Samuel Massie kneeling beside his bed the night before, praying not for his own deliverance, but for me, his judge, his wouldbe executioner.
I saw him praying that my heart would be softened, that I would see truth, that I would be saved from the terrible judgment I was bringing upon myself.
This man I was about to condemn to death was interceding for my soul.
The scene shifted.
I saw Daniel Masi’s son, a boy of only eight, asking his mother why the judge hated them so much.
I heard Ruth’s answer spoken through tears that the judge didn’t know better, that he thought he was serving God, that they should pray for him because he was lost.
This family I had dismissed as blasphemers, as enemies of God, were showing a love I had never understood, never possessed.
More scenes flooded my consciousness.
I saw every Christian I had condemned over the years saw their final moments, their last prayers.
To my utter incomprehension, many of them had prayed for me.
As they faced death or imprisonment, as their families were destroyed, as their children were orphaned, they prayed for their persecutors, for their judges, for me.
The weight of this revelation was crushing.
These people I had viewed as enemies of the divine were displaying a divinity I had never recognized.
Then the visions changed.
I saw myself as I truly was.
Not the righteous defender of faith I had imagined, but something far darker.
I saw the pride that had motivated me, the pleasure I took in power, the way I had used religion as a weapon to elevate myself.
I saw how I had ignored evidence, dismissed mercy, and clothed cruelty in religious rhetoric.
Each death sentence I had pronounced with such confidence now appeared before me as an indictment of my own soul.
The figure of light spoke then not in words but in a communication that transcended language.
The message was simple and shattering.
Tariq, why do you persecute me? The words echoed another story, one I knew from both Islamic and Christian sources.
The conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus.
But this was my Damascus.
my chambers in a Lahore courthouse.
My moment of divine interruption.
I fell from my chair.
My body unable to support itself under the weight of revelation.
On my knees on the floor of my chambers, I experienced something I can only describe as a complete dismantling.
Every certainty I had held, every belief that had structured my life, every source of pride and identity crumbled.
It wasn’t destruction for its own sake.
It was the necessary demolition before reconstruction could begin.
Tears came then, tears I hadn’t shed since childhood.
They weren’t just tears of remorse, though remorse was certainly present.
They were tears of recognition.
Recognizing the magnitude of my crimes, recognizing the truth I had opposed.
Recognizing the love I had rejected and persecuted, my body shook with sobs that seemed to come from a depth I didn’t know existed within me.
Through my tears, I became aware that the presence was still there, still radiating that impossible combination of judgment and love.
I felt a hand touch my head, a physical sensation, though I knew no physical hand was present.
The touch conveyed forgiveness, but not cheap forgiveness.
It was forgiveness that acknowledged the full horror of what I had done while simultaneously offering complete redemption.
It was forgiveness that would cost everything, my position, my reputation, my family standing, perhaps my life, but would give me something infinitely more valuable in return.
Words formed in my mind.
words I spoke aloud through my tears.
Lord, what would you have me do? The answer came immediately, not as a command, but as an invitation.
Free my people.
The seven Christians waiting for my judgment were his people.
And I was being given the opportunity to be an instrument of justice, real justice, for the first time in my career.
But even as this commission was given, I was shown that this was only the beginning.
The path ahead would be one of complete transformation, of leaving everything I had known, of becoming one of those I had persecuted.
I saw glimpses of what was to come.
The anger of my colleagues, the sense of betrayal from my family, the threats that would force me to flee my homeland.
But I also saw something else.
A peace that transcended circumstances.
A purpose that went beyond earthly position.
A love that made all losses gain.
The presence began to fade.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that my ability to perceive it in that intense way began to diminish.
But something had permanently changed.
The room looked the same, but I saw it differently.
The judgment papers on my desk were still there, but they now appeared to me as what they truly were.
Documents of injustice, weapons of oppression, dressed in legal language.
I looked at my watch, though it felt like hours had passed.
It was only 8:30 a.
m.
30 minutes until court would convene.
30 minutes to decide whether I would follow through on this transformation or retreat into the familiar darkness of my old certainty.
But even as I formulated that thought, I knew there was no real choice.
What I had experienced was too real, too undeniable.
I couldn’t unknow what I now knew.
I couldn’t unsee what I had seen.
My hands were still shaking as I stood and walked to my desk.
The judgment I had written condemning the MSI family lay there waiting for my signature and official pronouncement.
I picked up the pages and without hesitation tore them in half, then quarters, then smaller pieces.
With each tear, I felt something lift from my shoulders.
The weight of false righteousness I had carried for so long.
I began writing a new judgment.
My hand moved across the pages with a clarity and speed I had never experienced.
I wrote about the lack of credible evidence, the contradictions in testimony, the clear indication of ulterior motives behind the accusations.
But more than that, I wrote about justice.
true justice and the danger of using blasphemy laws as tools of oppression.
I wrote things that I knew would end my career, possibly my life, but they were things that needed to be written.
As I wrote, I became aware of a presence again, gentler this time, like someone reading over my shoulder in approval.
The fear that should have paralyzed me.
Fear of consequences, fear of reaction, fear of losing everything was held at bay by a piece I couldn’t explain.
It was as if I was being carried along by something greater than myself, finally aligned with a purpose that transcended personal safety or success.
The court officer knocked on my door at 8:55 a.
m.
, informing me that the courtroom was full and ready.
I looked at my reflection in the mirror as I adjusted my robes.
The face looking back was mine, but transformed.
The hardness I had cultivated for decades had been replaced by something else.
Not weakness, but a different kind of strength.
The pride that had defined my bearing was gone, replaced by something I would later recognize as humility.
As I walked toward the courtroom, I thought of the Mi family waiting in the holding area below.
They were expecting death, had probably spent the night saying their goodbyes, making their peace.
They had no idea that their judge had been arrested, not by human authorities, but by divine intervention.
They couldn’t know that the same power they served had invaded the chambers of their persecutor and transformed him from an agent of death to an instrument of life.
The walk to the courtroom seemed both eternal and instant.
Each step carried me further from who I had been and closer to who I was becoming.
The court staff noticed something different.
I could see it in their confused glances, their whispered exchanges.
The man walking to pronounce judgment was not the same man who had entered the building that morning.
As I reached the door to the courtroom, I paused.
Beyond that door waited hundreds of people expecting me to play my usual role.
The harsh defender of Islam, the merciless judge who never showed leniency in blasphemy cases.
The crowd of Muslim activists would be there ready to celebrate another victory.
The Christian supporters would be there braced for another tragedy.
None of them could imagine what was about to happen.
I thought of Saul becoming Paul, of persecutor becoming apostle.
I thought of all the biblical accounts I had dismissed, now suddenly alive with personal relevance.
I thought of the Damascus road and realized that my chambers had been my Damascus road.
The physical location didn’t matter.
What mattered was the encounter, the arrest, the complete reversal of direction.
My hand touched the door handle and I felt that presence once more.
A reassurance that I wasn’t walking in alone.
Whatever happened next, whatever consequences followed, I was no longer the same man who had walked these halls for 12 years.
I was new, though I barely understood what that meant.
I was free, though I was about to free others.
I was found, though to the world I would appear lost.
The courtroom door opened and I stepped through, carrying with me a judgment that would shake the foundations of everything I had built, everything I had been.
But I also carried something else, a truth that had arrested me, transformed me, and would now work through me to bring justice where I had once brought only judgment.
The months following that August morning were the most disorienting of my life.
After delivering the aqu quiddle that shocked the nation, I had returned to my chambers and sat in silence for hours.
The court building had erupted in chaos, angry crowds shouting about corruption and western influence.
Christian families weeping with joy and disbelief.
My fellow judges staring at me as if I had lost my mind.
Perhaps in their understanding I had.
That first night at home was terrible.
Aisha knew immediately that something fundamental had changed.
She found me in my study at 3:00 a.
m.
reading a Bible I had confiscated years ago from a blasphemy case.
I had kept it as a trophy of sorts, never imagining I would open its pages seeking truth.
When she saw what I was reading, the color drained from her face.
We sat in silence for a long time before she asked in a whisper, “What had happened to me? I couldn’t explain.
Not yet.
” How could I tell her about the vision, about Christ appearing in my chambers? She would think I had suffered a breakdown.
The weeks that followed were a careful dance of concealment and discovery.
Publicly, I continued my duties, though I found excuses to avoid blasphemy cases.
I claimed illness, scheduling conflicts, anything to keep from having to choose between my old ways and this new calling that I barely understood.
Privately, I devoured scripture with the same intensity I had once applied to Islamic juristprudence.
The Gospels especially captivated me.
The Jesus I met in those pages was the same presence I had encountered in my chambers.
Radical, transformative, impossibly loving.
I began to see my past differently.
Every harsh judgment, every death sentence, every family I had destroyed took on new meaning.
The weight of it was crushing.
I would wake at night drenched in sweat, seeing the faces of those I had condemned.
But alongside the guilt came something unexpected.
A sense of forgiveness that I couldn’t have imagined possible.
The same Christ who had arrested me in my chambers seemed to whisper through the pages of scripture that even I, even after all I had done, could be redeemed.
My behavioral changes didn’t go unnoticed.
My colleagues began to distance themselves, whispering about my softness.
After the MISI verdict, some suggested I had been bribed or threatened.
Others thought I was having a mental breakdown.
My superior, Chief Justice Muhammad, called me into his office one afternoon in October.
He spoke carefully about the pressures of our work, the importance of maintaining proper Islamic perspective, the availability of leave if I needed rest.
The subtext was clear.
Conform or face consequences.
At home, the situation grew increasingly tense.
Aisha found my hidden Bible one evening while I was in the shower.
When I emerged, she was sitting on our bed, the book in her lap, tears streaming down her face.
The conversation that followed was agonizing.
She couldn’t understand how I, who had been such a pillar of Islamic justice, could be reading Christian scripture.
I tried to explain the encounter, the vision, the transformation I was experiencing, but my words sounded insane even to my own ears.
Our children began to notice the changes, too.
My eldest daughter, Fatima, 22, and engaged to be married to the son of another prominent Islamic legal family, confronted me one evening.
She had heard rumors at the university where she studied.
Rumors that her father was losing his faith, that he was becoming sympathetic to Christians.
The shame in her eyes cut deeper than any blade.
My son Hassan stopped speaking to me entirely after overhearing one of my late night prayers where I had inadvertently called upon Jesus.
The wilderness period intensified in December when I was assigned another blasphemy case despite my efforts to avoid them.
A young Hindu man had been accused of defacing a Quran.
The evidence was even thinner than usual, a clear case of false accusation stemming from a business dispute.
The old Tik would have condemned him without hesitation.
The new man I was becoming couldn’t do it.
I spent three sleepless nights before the trial wrestling with God in prayer.
I knew that acquitting another blasphemy defendant would end my career, possibly my life.
The Islamic legal community was already suspicious after the Macy verdict.
Another acquitt would confirm their worst fears about me, but as I prayed, I kept hearing those words from my encounter.
Free my people.
The Hindu man was also his people, also deserving of justice.
The morning of the trial, I made my decision.
I acquitted him, writing a judgment that explicitly criticized the misuse of blasphemy laws for personal vendettas.
The courtroom erupted.
This time, the anger was more focused, more dangerous.
I received my first death threat that evening.
A note slipped under my office door promising that the defender of blasphemers would soon face divine justice.
That night, I told Asia everything.
I showed her passages from the Bible that had touched my heart, tried to explain the transformation I was experiencing.
She listened in silence, then asked me to leave the house.
She couldn’t have her children’s father, her husband becoming a Christian.
It would destroy the family’s honor and her daughter’s marriage prospects, make them all outcasts.
I packed a small bag and moved into a court- provided security apartment, though I knew the security was more about monitoring me than protecting me.
The wilderness deepened in January when I began secretly attending a small underground church in Lor.
The first time I walked through these doors, hidden in the basement of an innocuous shopping complex, my heart pounded so hard I thought it might burst.
The Pakistani Christians there, many of whom knew me by reputation as their persecutor, showed me a grace that broke me completely.
An elderly woman whose son I had sentenced to life imprisonment for blasphemy 5 years earlier embraced me and wept saying she had been praying for me every day since the trial.
Pastor Samuel, yes the same first name as Samuel Masi, whom I had freed became my secret spiritual mentor.
He was a small man with gentle eyes who had spent 10 years in prison on false blasphemy charges before being acquitted on appeal.
Every reason in the world suggested he should hate me, but instead he took me under his wing, teaching me what it meant to follow Christ in a land hostile to his name.
Those secret gatherings became my lifeline.
for a few hours each week I could drop the pretense could be among people who understood the transformation I was experiencing.
They taught me hymns in Uru shared their testimonies showed me what faith under persecution really looked like.
I who had been the persecutor was learning from the persecuted.
The irony was not lost on me.
By February, my position had become untenable.
I was being actively investigated by the judicial review board.
My phone was tapped, my movements monitored.
I had acquitted three more blasphemy defendants, each judgment more bold than the last in criticizing the legal framework I had once championed.
The death threats had escalated from notes to phone calls to men following me on the street.
One evening, my car windows were smashed, the interior covered with warnings written in blood, or what looked like blood.
The breaking point came in March.
Aisha called me, hysterical.
A mob had gathered outside our family home, demanding that the apostate judge be brought out.
Our children were inside, terrified.
The police had arrived, but seemed more interested in containing the situation than protecting my family.
I rushed there, pushing through the crowd that recognized me, and began shouting accusations of apostasy and blasphemy.
The same charges I had judged others for now hung over my own head.
Standing before that mob, seeing the hatred in their eyes, hatred I recognized because I had once harbored it myself, I made the decision that would change everything.
I publicly declared that I had become a follower of Jesus Christ.
The words seemed to hang in the air for a moment before the crowd erupted in rage.
Only the police presence prevented immediate violence, though I could see even in the officer’s eyes a desire to let the mob have their way.
That night, Pastor Samuel and the underground church network arranged for my family’s evacuation to a safe house.
Aisha came, not out of support for my conversion, but out of fear for our children’s lives.
My son, Hassan, refused to look at me.
My younger daughter, Amara, just 15, clung to her mother in terror.
Only Fatima met my eyes, and what I saw there was a mixture of disgust and grief, as if I had died and been replaced by a stranger.
The safe house period was perhaps the darkest valley of my wilderness journey.
Confined to a small apartment, unable to leave for fear of recognition, watching my family grieve the man I had been, while unable to fully explain the man I was becoming.
It was agony.
I spent hours in prayer, often prostrate on the floor, begging God for wisdom, for strength, for some sign that this path was right.
It was during this time that I began to truly understand the cost of following Christ in a hostile land.
Every Pakistani Christian I had ever judged had faced this same choice.
Deny Christ and live in safety or confess him and lose everything.
I had forced that choice upon so many, never understanding its weight.
Now I was living it, and the burden was almost unbearable.
Yet in that darkness, light began to break through.
My younger daughter, Amara, began asking questions.
Why had I changed? What had I seen? What made me willing to lose everything? Her curiosity led to quiet conversations late at night when the others were asleep.
I shared the gospel with her carefully, gently, always aware that she might report back to her mother.
But she kept coming back, kept asking questions, kept seeking truth.
One night in April, as Ramadan began, a month I had observed faithfully for 54 years, I found myself unable to fast according to Islamic tradition.
Instead, I fasted in a different way, seeking God’s face through Christ, praying for my family, for Pakistan, for the hundreds I had wronged.
It was during this time that I received word through the underground church network.
The Masi family wanted to meet me.
The meeting was arranged in absolute secrecy.
When Samuel Masi walked into that small room, I fell to my knees.
This man I had nearly murdered in the name of religious justice looked at me with eyes that held no hatred, only compassion.
He helped me to my feet and embraced me, calling me brother.
That single word undid me completely.
I wept in his arms, years of pride and cruelty pouring out in tears of repentance.
The MSI family’s forgiveness became a turning point in my wilderness journey.
They prayed over me, shared their own stories of faith under persecution, and showed me what it meant to truly follow Christ in Pakistan.
Ruth Masi, whose hands had trembled so violently in my courtroom, now laid those same hands on my head in blessing.
The teenagers I had nearly condemned to death spoke words of encouragement and hope.
It was the gospel lived out in a way that no theology book could capture.
But the wilderness was far from over.
In May, my location was discovered.
How it happened.
We never learned.
Perhaps a neighbor recognized me.
Perhaps someone in the network was compromised.
We had 10 minutes warning before the mob arrived.
The escape that followed was like something from a nightmare.
Hiding in the back of a vegetable truck, my family disguised in burkas, racing through back streets as news of the apostate judges location spread through social media.
We couldn’t stay in Pakistan.
That much had become clear.
The underground church network began working on arrangements for us to leave the country, but it would take time.
Time we might not have.
Every day brought new dangers, new close calls.
The stress was destroying my family.
Aisha had stopped eating, growing gaunt and holloweyed.
Hassan had attempted to leave twice to turn himself over to the authorities, hoping to distance himself from my apostasy.
Fatima’s engagement had been broken off, her future in ruins.
Yet, in this darkest period, something remarkable happened.
Amara, my youngest, came to me one night and said she had been reading the Bible I had given her.
She wanted to know more about Jesus.
In whispered conversations in the dark, I shared the gospel with my daughter, watching her eyes light up with understanding.
When she prayed to receive Christ on a humid June night, with the sound of sirens in the distance and uncertainty clouding our future, I experienced a joy that transcended all the loss.
The wilderness had stripped everything from me.
position, reputation, homeland, even most of my family.
But it had also revealed something, the sufficiency of Christ.
Every earthly security had been removed, leaving only him.
And remarkably, incredibly, that was enough.
More than enough.
As June turned to July and our departure from Pakistan became imminent, I reflected on this wilderness period.
Like the biblical wilderness experiences of Moses, David, and even Jesus himself, this had been a time of stripping away and building up, of dying to self and living to Christ.
The man who would leave Pakistan was unrecognizable from the one who had entered that courthouse chambers 11 months earlier.
And though I was leaving behind everything I had known, I was carrying with me something infinitely more valuable.
A faith tested by fire and proven true.
The flight from Pakistan in July 2019 remains a blur of fear and desperate prayer.
Through a network of Christian organizations and sympathetic embassies, we were granted emergency visas to a country I cannot name even now for security reasons.
As our plane lifted off from Islamabad airport at 3:00 a.
m.
, I watched the lights of the only homeland I had ever known disappear beneath clouds and darkness.
Aisha sat rigid beside me, refusing comfort.
Hassan had his face turned to the window, his jaw clenched.
Fetam stared ahead, lost in her shattered dreams.
Only Amara held my hand, squeezing it gently.
My one ally in the family, though she had to hide her faith from her mother and siblings.
Those first months in our new country were brutal in ways I hadn’t anticipated.
The physical safety we had gained came at the cost of complete displacement.
Everything familiar was gone.
Language, food, climate, culture.
We were housed initially in a refugee processing center, a sterile facility where my family, accustomed to a prominent position in Pakistani society, now shared cramped quarters with other displaced souls.
The fall from grace was complete and devastating.
I watched my family struggle with this new reality.
Aisha, who had managed a household with servants, now had to learn basic tasks she had never performed.
Hassan, who had been studying law to follow in my footsteps, saw his entire future erased.
Fatima mourned not just her broken engagement, but the loss of every dream she had cultivated.
We were nobodyies in this new land.
Worse than nobodyies.
We were refugees with a story too dangerous to tell.
The Christian organizations that had helped us escape continued their support.
But integration was a challenge I hadn’t foreseen.
My legal credentials meant nothing here.
The man who had once held the power of life and death over others now struggled to fill out basic administrative forms in a language I barely understood.
I took work where I could find it, cleaning offices at night, stocking shelves in a halal grocery store run by a sympathetic Arab Christian who knew our story.
The mighty judge Sha had become a janitor, and the humiliation was a daily weight.
But God was working even in this valley of humiliation.
The menial labor became a form of prayer for me.
As I mopped floors, I thought of Jesus washing his disciples feet.
As I cleaned toilets, I remembered that no service done in his name was beneath dignity.
The pride that had defined me for decades was being systematically destroyed.
And in its place, something beautiful was growing.
Genuine humility.
The underground Pakistani Christian community in our new country reached out to us.
These were people who had fled persecution years or decades earlier and they understood our journey.
They helped us navigate the bureaucracy, taught us the unspoken rules of our new home and most importantly they embraced us as family.
Among them were three families I had personally persecuted.
people who had fled Pakistan after I had imprisoned their loved ones.
The first meeting was excruciating.
I fell to my knees before them, but they lifted me up saying forgiveness had already been given.
One man, Thomas Gil, whose brother had died in prison after I sentenced him for blasphemy in 2009, became my closest friend.
He told me that his brother had spent his final years in prison leading other inmates to Christ.
That even in that dark place, God had worked redemption.
“Your injustice became God’s opportunity.
” He said, “My brother might never have had such a powerful ministry if he had remained free.
” The grace in those words broke me a new.
It was through Thomas that I began what would become my life’s work.
He ran a small organization documenting persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan, gathering evidence and testimonies to present to international human rights bodies.
He asked if I would help given my intimate knowledge of the legal system.
At first, I hesitated.
What right did I have to advocate for the persecuted when I had been the persecutor? But Thomas insisted that my testimony was unique and powerful.
Who better to expose the injustice of blasphemy laws than someone who had once wielded them? I began writing first a detailed account of how blasphemy laws were systematically abused in Pakistan’s courts.
I exposed the open secret that judges knew most blasphemy accusations were false, but convicted anyway out of fear or prejudice.
I detailed the pressure tactics, the mob intimidation, the way the law was used to settle personal scores and steal property from minorities.
I named names, including my own, taking full responsibility for my role in the system.
The document was published anonymously by several human rights organizations in December 2019.
It sent shock waves through Pakistan’s legal community.
Some denounced it as fabrication, but others privately admitted its accuracy.
The government issued a statement condemning the traitorous propaganda and confirming that apostasy charges were pending against me should I ever return.
I was now officially an enemy of the state I had once served.
Meanwhile, my family was fracturing.
Hassan had found a mosque in our new city and threw himself into Islamic activities with a fervor that seemed designed to compensate for my apostasy.
He moved out as soon as he turned 18, cutting all contact with me.
His last words to me were, “You are not my father.
My father died in Pakistan.
The pain of those words still echoes in my chest.
Fatima fell into deep depression.
She rarely left her room, spending hours on the phone with friends back in Pakistan who updated her on all she was missing, the weddings she should have attended, the life she should have been living.
She blamed me entirely.
And she wasn’t wrong.
My conversion had destroyed her life as she knew it.
The guilt I carried over my children’s suffering was sometimes harder to bear than my own losses.
Aisha and I lived as strangers under the same roof.
She maintained the household for the sake of the children, but made it clear that our marriage was over in all but legal terms.
She couldn’t divorce me.
That would bring even more shame.
But she couldn’t forgive me either.
We spoke only when necessary, usually about practical matters.
The woman who had been my partner for 28 years now looked at me as if I were a disease that had infected her life.
Only with Amara did I find any family connection.
She had to hide her growing faith from her mother and siblings.
But in stolen moments, we would read scripture together, pray together, grow together in Christ.
She attended school in our new country and thrived, freed from the constraints that would have limited her in Pakistan.
She told me once that despite all the loss, she was grateful for our new life because it had led her to Jesus.
That single statement made every sacrifice worthwhile.
In March 2020, just as COVID 19 was shutting down the world, I received news that shattered me.
Samuel Masi, the man whose case had begun my transformation, had been murdered.
He had been shot outside his home by extremists, angry that he had escaped justice.
His son, Daniel, was critically injured in the same attack.
The family I had freed had paid the ultimate price, and the guilt was overwhelming.
I had thought acquitting them would save them.
Instead, it had marked them for vigilante justice.