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Zakie* is a courageous woman whose story reflects the reality of countless Afghan women who choose to follow Jesus in one of the most dangerous places on earth to be both a woman and a Christian. From facing rejection by her community and family to fleeing the Taliban with a newborn baby and a wounded husband, Zakie's journey is a stark reminder of the high cost of choosing to follow Christ. Yet, it is also a testament to an unrelenting hope that never abandons. Today, though she is far from home, Zakie's faith, that survived intense persecution, is ministering to other women just like her, building God's Kingdom through one woman at a time.
For most of her life, Zakie believed that God was primarily a terrifying scorekeeper—a sort of cosmic referee waiting for His creations to make a mistake so He could cast them into hell. She did her best to be a faithful Muslim; but she lived with the weight of trying to follow a God who would condemn her on a whim.
"In Islam, they always instilled a fear of God," she explains. "They said if you don't pray, for example, you cannot go to heaven. If you don't fast, you are not pure in Islam, not a proper Muslim."
"For me, Jesus is Lord, Savior and Healer. Jesus is everything to me."
Zakie, Afghan believer
Zakie was born into a devout Muslim family in Afghanistan. There, her days revolved around the rigid clockwork of trying to keep up with Islamic law.
"Worship in Islam had a separate time," Zakie says. "For example, when you wake up, the sun shouldn't be up when you pray. If the sun was up, they would say the prayer is not valid. We also had to pray in the evening before it was night. At bedtime, we had to pray at a proper time. If it wasn't at the proper time, we would be humiliated by [our] father or whoever is the head of the family. So, as long as I was single, I was forced in this way that when I was with my family."
For a woman in Afghanistan, the chains were even tighter than prayer schedules. Every aspect of her existence was controlled by strict rules. "Our heads had to be covered, our faces had to be covered, we had to wear large clothes, our hands had to be covered, and our bodies had to be covered all the way to the feet," Zakie explains. From her experience she says, "A woman is always seen as inferior. They don't give women rights and privileges. They use a woman as a slave, as a sexual slave."
This meant her life was planned out for her. As she neared the completion of high school, she was given in marriage. Her husband was also a Muslim, so her life of quiet obedience continued. She had merely traded her father's authority for her husband's. Like so many other women in Afghanistan, Zakie's life was not her own. She never imagined that true freedom was possible—until she witnessed it within the walls of her own home.
The transformation didn't start with a sermon or a tract; it started with her husband. Like Zakie, he had been raised in a devout Muslim family. He was no different from other men in their community—quick to retaliate, harsh and dismissive of women.
But over time, she noticed gradual changes in his character. His anger vanished. He began to show affection. He forgave.
It was all because he had found Jesus.
"I saw that changes had come into my husband's being," Zakie recalls. "I saw my husband had come to faith. He became humble, he had forgiveness, and he showed us so much love. In the past, it wasn't like this. In the past, he would get angry a lot, had no forgiveness and there was no love in the house; he didn't show us love."
When her husband finally shared that he had become a Christian, following his lead to faith in Christ was not a difficult decision.
"When I saw the changes in my husband's life, I also came to faith," Zakie says. "He [shared] John 3:16, that 'God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.' This encouraged me even more, and I came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ."
Hearing about God's radical love shattered the image of the angry, distant God she had grown up with. Witnessing her husband's transformation proved to her that this God was real, powerful and full of love.
Conversion opened a completely new experience for Zakie. She had heard of Christians, mostly that they were infidels, but she never imagined she would become one.
"When I was a Muslim, some people would say that a 'Christian' is an infidel," she says. "At that time, I thought that an infidel must be someone who doesn't know God. Maybe they don't have forgiveness, or they are adulterers, evildoers, deceivers and liars. But when I came to faith, I understood that those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are humble, and they have love. When I became a believer, the image I had of Christians changed. I saw it was the opposite."
As Zakie and her husband's faith took root, God began touching every area of their lives. They were transformed day by day.
"In the past, if someone wronged us, we would not forgive them," she says. "Not at all. That unforgiveness and the problems that came our way felt like a very heavy weight on our shoulders. When we came to faith, this weight and these problems were lifted from our shoulders; they went away. We became light. As God says, 'Love your God and love your neighbor as yourself.' This had a great impact on our lives."
Zakie once lived a life controlled by the rules of Afghanistan's strict interpretation of Islam, but after accepting Christ, she began experiencing true freedom. Her interactions with God were no longer about fear, but about an intimate relationship.
"When I came to faith through my husband, thank God, I was freed from the chains and bonds of [my past faith]," she says. "I can worship my God at any time, without a schedule, I can praise my God, I can pray. It has no set time. At any time, we can praise our God, worship Him and glorify His name."
"Peace came into my life," Zakie continues. "In the past, I was very heartbroken. I was always thinking about how I hadn't worshipped God, I hadn't fasted, I hadn't made sacrifices. I thought I couldn't reach heaven. But now that I have come to faith, there have been many changes. Thank God, when I pray, when I worship and when we glorify the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm glad that now I am saved, that God has chosen me, I have a place in the Kingdom of God, and I have obtained eternal salvation."
But that assurance would be quickly put to the test. After all, Zakie is a Christian woman from Afghanistan.
In tight-knit communities like Zakie's, secrets are hard to keep. Soon, her and her husband's newfound faith was too obvious to hide. The rejection was swift and intense, as leaving Islam is viewed as a betrayal of family and their culture.
"Some people would insult me saying, 'This woman is a kafir [infidel]. Don't eat with her from the same dish. Don't sit at the same table with her,'" Zakie says. "When I would pick up children to show them affection, their mothers wouldn't allow it; they would grab their children back. They would say, 'No, don't go near her. She is a very bad woman. She is a denier of God. She has become an infidel.'"
The hostility ran deep. Even the children in Zakie's village looked at her with disgust.
"One day when I was coming home, a boy [of] maybe 12 or 14 years old, had a bottle of soda in his hand, and he emptied it on me [from the top floor] and ran away," Zakie says. "I came home very upset. I asked God, 'Lord, what wrong thing have I done that everyone in the society rejects me?'"
She was also excluded from family gatherings. Even when a relative died, she was prohibited from attending the funeral.
"They hold a Quran recitation ceremony when a relative dies," she explains. "They [told] me, 'You are an infidel, so you don't understand the Quran.' I wasn't allowed to go there. When they think someone believes in Jesus Christ and doesn't follow Islamic rules, [they think] these people are not human at all."
Zakie felt the sting of the hurt, but when she sat down to pray, she always found the strength to forgive them and love them.
"I always sat separately by myself and prayed to my God. I prayed for them that God would forgive their sins," she shares. "Because God Himself always forgives and always shows us love, I showed them love, and I still forgave them. They were both my family and my relatives; I couldn't be distant and separate from them."
Zakie was not alone in this suffering. She remembers a friend who was a secret believer; neither her husband nor her relatives knew she had become a Christian. Zakie often called her on Sundays, pretending to invite her for recreational activities as a cover for attending church.
"Later, when her husband found out, he didn't let her come to church anymore for worship. He cut off her relationship with me," Zakie says. "He had told her, 'You must not talk with Zakie. You must not message her. You shouldn't even greet her when you see her on the street. If I see you with Zakie again, talking together, I will cut off your ears and nose and throw you out of the house, and I will take the children away.'"
With four children to protect, Zakie's friend had no choice but to obey. The final text message Zakie received from her still weighs heavily on her heart: "Dear Zakie, don't message me anymore. Don't call me. I can't continue anymore because my husband has warned me, 'I will cut off your ears and nose, and I will take the children and throw you out of the house.'"
However, Zakie finds consolation in the fact that her friend has not abandoned her faith, despite the brutality she endures from her husband. "He would beat [my friend], always insulting, humiliating, and rejecting her," Zakie says. "Because he had gradually figured out that his wife had come to faith. His wife believed in Jesus Christ; she still does."
Zakie's family could endure the social rejection, but soon the hostility turned violent. Villagers reported them to the Taliban. The extremists knew who they were, and there was no escape.
"They took my husband twice, tortured him, and we even thought they had killed him," Zakie says. "They wanted to eliminate us. They wanted to kill us. We couldn't even stay in our own home for one night. We were always going from one house to another, out of fear that they would kill us and take our daughters from us."
The danger reached a breaking point just three months before the Taliban completely took over Afghanistan in 2021.
"My husband, my daughters, and I had gone to the house of one of our relatives," Zakie says. "When we came out of our relative's house, a motorcycle stopped on the road, and [a man] got off the motorcycle and shot my husband."
By God's grace, her husband survived, but the message was clear: Leave ... or die.
"We took my husband to the hospital, but we were very scared, and that same night we fled from Afghanistan," Zakie says.
The decision to leave was agonizing. Zakie had just given birth and had to care for a newborn while helping her wounded husband. Yet, staying meant risking that the Taliban would kidnap her daughters—a common practice where young girls are taken as brides or servants.
Today, Zakie and her family are living safely in a country in Central Asia. Looking back, she sees the goodness of God even in the most hopeless moments.
"I was always praying for God to help us and to give us strength. God gave us strength and peace. We were able to reach a safe place," she shares.
Though she is far from home, her heart remains with the women of her homeland. She is now working with refugee women who have suffered immense trauma, just as she did.
"I do discipleship with women, because there are women who have experienced much trauma and have seen many problems. I share the Word of God with them, and share the love of God with them," Zakie explains.
Life as a refugee is not easy. As a Christian, she's still at risk in her community. And Afghans have few rights in the place where she lives. But even amid persecution and the testing of her faith, she holds onto hope because she knows who Jesus is.
"For me, Jesus is Lord, Savior and Healer. Jesus is everything to me," says Zakie. "What gives me hope is that I have found the living God, and that the living God has taken a place in my heart and that I have an eternal life. I have a close relationship with my God. This is what brings me joy. In every situation, God is with me. This is my joy and peace."
Open Doors partners in Central Asia are supporting Zakie to continue her ministry among Afghan refugee women. There are others like Zakie who have a calling and a passion for serving women and offering them hope. Open Doors' support through training, literature and practical help enables these women to fulfil their calling to strengthen women and build the Kingdom of God among Afghans.
*Name changed for security reasons.
