by Esther Ahmad
It was not hard to remember back to when I believed Miss Shah and my other teachers held the key to my future. Even when I was living as a secret believer, I valued education highly. I trusted my lecturers at college to guide me toward my goal of getting a degree and a job, and the freedom those opportunities would bring. I had thanked God for those teachers many times.
But something within me shifted the moment I saw Miss Shah standing in the meeting room. I realized that she was no longer on my side.
I held out my hand and felt the familiar weight of the Holy Bible.
“Chapter 1, verses 11 and 12 please, Zakhira.”
I did as I was told and started reading the Creation account, where God told the land to produce vegetation.
“Louder,” Miss Shah said. “So everyone can hear.”
When I finished, she had me read later in the chapter, where God created the sun, moon, and stars.
“Tell me, according to science, what should be created first: vegetation or sunlight?”
I knew instantly where she was heading. “Sunlight, then vegetation.”
“Yes, and since we know that Allah can’t make a single mistake, when we read here that he created vegetation first and the sun second, the Bible itself must be in error. And if these first pages of the book are false, then everything that follows must be questioned as well.”
She had me. After a week of debates with clerics whose arguments had slowly turned to dust, Miss Shah had beaten me within a few minutes. I looked down at the Holy Bible, fought back tears, and begged God for help.
“Miss,” I said a moment later, my blood pulsing and my eyes clear. “God isn’t wrong, nor is the Holy Bible false. God made everything according to science because he is the Creator and source of all, including science.”
I read the entire account of Creation. “Miss, is it clear to you yet? God created light first in verse 3, and then he created vegetation in verse 11. And just as an indoor plant can survive without direct sunlight, so the earth was able to grow before the sun was formed.”
She looked unimpressed.
“My daughter.” She brushed the air aside with a sweep of her hand. “Perhaps the Christians didn’t tell you this, but they’re actually following three Gods. They call them the Trinity, but their logic isn’t sound. We believe Allah is mighty enough on his own.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, feeling the looks of disapproval around me. “Christians also believe in one God, but he has shown himself in three different ways. In Moses’ time, he showed himself in fire. At the time of the last prophet of the Holy Bible, John the Baptist, God revealed himself in a human body as Jesus Christ.”
She looked skeptical.
“You can see for yourself in the Qur’an,” I went on. “It’s written in Surah 21, verse 91, and Surah 66, verse 12.”
I was not surprised that she wanted to talk about the Trinity. Like many Muslims, I had been taught that Christianity has three major flaws: it follows three Gods; it claims that Jesus is the Son of God; and its book, the Bible, has been changed. Most Muslims accept these criticisms without really trying to find the truth for themselves.
As Miss Shah seemed to have little else to say, I decided to press on with my defense of the Trinity.
“Why does the Qur’an refer to Allah using the word we 1,297 times, the word our 217 times, and the word us 88 times? Shouldn’t it be I if he is as you say?”
The room filled with murmurs again.
“If the Christians are so wrong about this, why does the Qur’an tell Christians and Jews they have nothing to fear?”
More murmurs.
“Lo!” I recited from the Qur’an, “those who believe, and those who are Jews, and Sabeans, and Christians—Whosoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right—there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve.”[23]
The room fell silent. Miss Shah left. The debate was over.
†
It was inevitable that one day I turned up in the meeting room to find my uncle standing at the front, waiting to debate me. He was my father’s brother, the same one who had found out about my writing to the Bible Society. The same one who had led the first calls for me to be killed on the street.
From the start of the debate, he was shouting, accusing me of being a kafir and disrespecting the prophet Muhammad. I could feel the anger rising within me, but I tried to remain calm.
When he paused to take a breath, I seized the opportunity. “Tell me, when Hazrat Muhammad was twenty-five years old and he married his first wife, Khadijah, who performed the marriage ceremony? And was it a Jewish ceremony or a Hindu ceremony?”
“You foolish girl,” he sniffed. “Khadijah accepted Islam.”
“But there was no Islam until fifteen years later, when Hazrat Muhammad was forty years old. So did Muhammad become a Jew? And if he did, why do Muslims hate Jews so much today?”
It was a dangerous thing to say, and it sent my uncle into an even greater rage. He put his face right up next to mine, and I saw that his eyes were wild and his cheeks were flushed beneath his beard. “You’ve been led astray, my daughter. They’ve brainwashed you!”
“No, Uncle.” I was a little surprised at how calm my voice sounded. “They haven’t. I’ve just discovered the truth.”
“The truth? Everybody knows that the Bible has been changed. There’s an original manuscript in Egypt that has the story of Hazrat Muhammad in it.”
“Uncle,” I said with a laugh, “I will pay your travel expenses if you go there and bring home a copy to compare with the Holy Bible I’ve been reading. If the Egyptian Bible is different from the one I’ve read, I promise I will come back to Islam. But if they’re the same, you have to become a Christian like me.”
He threw up his hands and spun on his heels, muttering about how I was impossible to help.
†
I tried to find a pattern, but it seemed that the people brought in to debate me were selected at random. Even if I refuted a series of outrageous claims about the Bible one day, a few days later I might face a different cleric who asked exactly the same questions. These attacks seemed as uncoordinated and confused as the Qur’an itself.
In the third week of my house arrest, I received another visit from a lecturer at my old college. This woman had occasionally taught me chemistry. “I heard that you’d been led astray, and I felt so bad,” she said to me as we waited for my father to show the rest of the people in. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing bad happened, Miss. I’m very well.”
“It’s really sad to change your religion. How was it possible for anyone to take you from the right path?”
“I don’t think anyone could take me away from this path I’m on now,” I said. “And I wouldn’t want them to either. This is the path that leads to eternal life.”
“You know, I studied in the UK and America, but nothing could change my faith in Islam.”
“I’m sorry that you went all that way but still came home thirsty. Without the living water, nothing can satisfy you.”
She mumbled that she wasn’t thirsty for what I was describing and turned away. I felt bold and free, so I leaned in close. “You have no desire to seek the Lord, no thirst for eternal life. So you need to pray to Jesus Christ and ask him to make you hungry and thirsty for him. Only when you do that will you see the Lord.”
She stood up and spoke so loudly that the whole room fell silent. “I didn’t come here to listen to you. I came here to tell you what’s important.”
“Miss, if you won’t listen to me, then how will you know why I left Islam? Isn’t that why you’re here?”
I did not expect her to soften, but she did. “Okay, tell me what made you change your religion.”
“I will. But first, may I ask you something about chemistry?”
“Are you joking?”
“No, Miss, I’m serious. I just have a question that I want to ask now so I won’t forget it later. But if you aren
’t willing, that’s okay.”
She waved her hand, so I carried on. “If you are asked in an exam to explain how to prepare a certain gas, what’s the best answer?”
“Start with the heading, then list the apparatus, then the procedure, and lastly the precautions. That’s it.”
“That’s helpful—thank you, Miss. How did you get to be so good at chemistry?”
“Allah gave me the gift.” She was unable to hide the smile from her voice.
“So imagine I’m in the exam, and I write my heading: ‘Preparation of Oxygen.’ Then I write, ‘Potatoes are so nice,’ then ‘My mother and I went shopping,’ then ‘My baby sister is crying,’ and finally ‘That’s how you make oxygen.’ What kind of marks would I get?”
“None. You clearly wouldn’t know anything about oxygen.”
“Tell me about Allah. How much wiser than us is he?”
“Unlimited,” she said. “He is the source of all wisdom.”
“So why did Allah not show his wisdom when he was inspiring the writing of the Qur’an?”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “Perhaps you didn’t read the Qur’an correctly.”
“That’s possible. Could we read something from it together now? I’ve always liked the story of Jonah.”
I had her open the Qur’an to Surah 10, the chapter titled “Yunus” (Jonah), and listened while she read. When she was done, I asked her a simple question: “What did you learn about Jonah from what you just read?”
She stayed silent.
“Shouldn’t a passage with the heading ‘Jonah’ contain at least some information about the prophet? But in all those 109 verses you just read, there was only one that even mentioned his name. Why can’t Allah, who has higher wisdom than you, accurately tell the story in the Qur’an?”
She had nothing to say. Nor did anyone else in the room.
“If you look at the Holy Bible, you’ll see that everything is clear. Genesis means ‘beginning,’ and that’s exactly what the book describes. Exodus refers to a situation where many people leave a place at the same time, and in it you can read all about the Israelites leaving Egypt. If you want to read about Jonah, just look at the book called Jonah. It’s the same with Jeremiah and other prophets. This is the holy book of God, and we can see his wisdom clearly through it. The Qur’an, on the other hand, is confusing and misleading.”
My former teacher sat in silence, as did everybody else in the room. Since no one made a move to stop me, I went on. “There are other reasons why I accepted Christianity. Like the fact that Jesus Christ taught love. He told people, ‘Love your enemies’ and ‘If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.’ But all Islam ever taught me was hate. It says in Surah Muhammad 47:4 to kill those who never embrace Islam.”
I was about to start a new point when she stood up, leaned in close, and whispered, “I really don’t know what to say.”
I looked at her carefully. Her eyes were honest. She looked like she was close to tears.
“Then I have good news for you. Jesus Christ loves you. That’s the reason you’re here today. He wants to reveal the truth to you. He wants you to know him.”
I watched her eyes flick from me to the roomful of skeptical men. When she looked back at me, her face was creased with worry. “I have to go. I have a class to teach.”
†
Later that evening, I poured out my thanks to God. I prayed for my teacher, that her spiritual eyes might be opened. I prayed the same thing for my father, my brother, and my sisters. I prayed for myself, that my heart and mind would be ready for whatever the next day would bring.
As I prayed, it hit me that there was a pattern to these debates after all. But it had little to do with the agenda of the leaders of my religious community. The common factor was the way that God was using me.
At first I’d seen the debates as trials of my own belief and understanding of God, as if I were being judged not only by the clerics but by God himself. The longer the debates went on, however, the more I saw that God was using me as his mouthpiece, revealing his truth to those who needed to hear it.
It was a powerful realization, and I felt a burden slip from my shoulders.
These debates were a gift. From now on, I would receive them gladly.
[23] Qur’an 5:69.
23
My father had laughed when I first said it. It was not a small laugh either; it was a roar so loud all the traders in the market stopped their business and looked at us. He was clean shaven at the time, and he laughed so hard that the veins in his neck stood out. I liked the sound of his laugh, so I said it again.
“I want the ice cream shaped like a panda. That one right there.”
As predicted, he laughed again, placing his hand on my shoulder. It was gentle and warm, and I wanted to reach up and hold it. I wanted to weave my tiny fingers around his, to hold on to this moment and never let it go.
“Why not something else?” His eyes sparkled as he teased me. “Look, they even have sliced cow’s foot. I know how much you like that.”
I made a face, crossed my arms, and pretended to be mad. “Cows can be found anywhere, but pandas only live in China. That’s why I want the ice cream.”
My father gave in and then told me it was time to head back home. I walked beside him, holding the panda ice cream like a trophy, carefully licking up the drips and trying to make the treat last as long as possible.
It was my happiest moment with him.
In my memory, he started growing his beard soon after. The beard signaled an end to his placing his hand on my shoulder, an end to his filling the air with laughter, an end to my walking alone with him to the market.
The truth was less dramatic. The signs of physical affection, the sound of laughter, and those daddy-daughter moments were never regular features of my life. That memory stands in isolation, a single event in stark contrast to all the others. Even before he grew his beard, he was characteristically distant and cold.
As the debates continued and my father watched silently from the back, I knew he would never change his mind. There was no nostalgia for him, no idyllic period to return to. The moments of warmth were as temporary as the panda ice cream that had melted in the sun. As the third week of debates drew to a close, I decided two things needed to happen urgently.
I’d had little contact with my two older sisters since they married and moved out. That made me even more determined to share my faith with my brother and younger sister. I had met with them nightly since all this began. We would talk about what had been said in the debates, and they would ask questions about Christianity. It was important to me that, along with seeing the risks of becoming a Christian and the flaws of Islam, they knew about the wonderful freedom and truth of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
One night, about three weeks into the debates, my brother and sister told me they were ready to give their lives to Jesus. With our voices hushed to make sure my father did not wake up, my mother and I sat with them in my room and led them in prayer.
When we had finished our tearstained embraces, I gave them a warning: “Be careful. Don’t tell anyone you’re a Christian yet. When the right time comes, you’ll know it. But until then, you have to keep your new faith secret.”
†
More debates took place in the days that followed, and as before, I tried to take any opportunity I could to share my faith. Sometimes that was harder than other times. The atmosphere in the room was beginning to shift. No longer was I facing educated, thoughtful lecturers from my college. Nor were there foolish clerics hoping to win me back by weighing the Qur’an and the Holy Bible side by side. Instead, my opponents were all pompous clerics who tried to patronize me.
Sometimes, when they felt threatened, they would get angry. It became increasingly common for me to find myself shouted at, called an infidel, and accused of blasphemy. At times like these, the conversation felt less like a debate and more like a rally to stir up
hatred among the crowd.
At one such time, a mullah was shouting at me for not following Muhammad’s sunna—the collection of his actions and deeds.
“Are you following all of his sunna?” I asked when his tirade paused.
“Of course!” He looked around at the people in the audience, many of whom were nodding at him.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “You’re missing one.”
“Which one?”
“Hazrat Muhammad was fifty-one years old when he married Hazrat Aisha, who was just six years old at the time, a few years younger than Hazrat Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah. He waited three years, but still she was nine years old when he took her to his bed.”
He looked at me blankly. I pressed on. “Do you have a daughter?”
“Yes.”
“How old is she?”
“Eight.”
“Tell me honestly: Wasn’t Hazrat Aisha too young to be taken as a wife when she was still playing with dolls? According to this current era, it would be rape or child abuse.”
He held up his hand. “Hazrat Muhammad just obeyed Allah.”
“Really?” I knew that with every word, I was fueling the hatred of me in the room. “If Hazrat Muhammad was instructed by Allah to take a child as his wife, why did he refuse the first two caliphs of Islam, Abu Bakr Siddique and Umar Farooq, when they asked to marry his own daughter Fatimah? Why, instead of those old men, did Hazrat Muhammad choose for her husband Ali, who was about twenty-five years old? And why, when Hazrat Muhammad had multiple wives, did he never allow his son-in-law Ali to get a second wife, even though he desired to marry the daughter of Abu Jahal? Hazrat Muhammad allowed other followers to be polygamists, but he didn’t want to upset his daughter Fatimah.”
The mullah was quiet. He looked at me with nothing short of pure hatred. As the crowd started shouting, I made my final point. “I became a Christian because in the Holy Bible, the law is the same for everyone. There is no hypocrisy within its pages.”
