Defying Jihad by Esther Ahmad & Craig Borlase

Author:Esther Ahmad & Craig Borlase
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Religious Intolerance, Persecution & Conflict, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2019-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

[10] Matthew 5:10-12.

[11] Exodus 20:12.

[12] Ephesians 6:1.

[13] Romans 8:18.

17

That day in the market was not the first time I’d seen Jesus heal someone. It wasn’t even the first time I had seen him heal my mother.

It happened over a decade earlier, before I started at the madrassa. I walked in after school one day and noticed that something was out of place. On the shelf in the hall that held my trophies, certificates, and A-grade tests was an additional item that had not been there when I left in the morning. There on the shelf, between my first debate trophy and a report card on which my teacher praised me for being the most diligent pupil in the school, was a single piece of paper, carefully folded.

I was on the verge of asking my mother about it when curiosity took over. I opened the paper, fold by fold, until it was bigger than my hand. Just two words were written on it in Arabic script: Jesu Shafi.

The names were vaguely familiar, but the pairing struck me as odd. I knew that Shafi was an Arabic name that could mean a number of things. Mediator. Truthful. Healer. Jesu I was less familiar with. Wasn’t that the name some people called Isa, one of the prophets? But why put them together? And why was it on my trophy shelf?

I went in search of my mother, waving the paper above my head. Before I could say anything, she gasped and closed her eyes.

“Zakhira! Why did you open it?”

“It was on my shelf.”

“Did you read it?”

“Yes. It says—”

“Don’t!” she shouted. “The mullah said we must not read it if we want it to work. Fold it up and put it back.”

She sat down, clutching her jaw. It struck me that she looked old and tired.

I sat beside her, leaning my head on her shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Ami.”

“It’s not your fault, Zakhira. I have a toothache and I couldn’t sleep last night, so I went to the mosque and asked one of the mullahs for help. He gave me the paper and told me not to open it but to wear it around my neck. I was waiting to go to the market to ask the cobbler to sew it into a leather pouch for me.”

“Oh,” I said. “Will it not work now?”

“I don’t know.”

When my father came home and heard what had happened, he took us all to the mosque right away. It was the first time I could remember going to the mosque with my father, and as we waited in a corridor, I sat silent and still, happy for the covering my veil provided.

The mullah listened carefully as my father explained what had happened. Then he asked my mother if she had read the paper.

“No,” she said.

“And did you read it?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said, too quietly at first. At my father’s prodding, I spoke a little louder. “Yes! I read it.”

To my surprise, the mullah was not angry. He

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