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.