I was born in a country in which 99% percent of the population is Muslim. My family’s religious views background is Shiite Muslim.
I began to learn Islamic education in the mosque. At that time there was no school in our area. The only education center was mosques which Mollahs were the teachers. All teaching was about Islam. I went to the mosque for about 7 years. After that, a school opened to my area by a foreign humanitarian organization called Shohada organization which was about 25 kilometers far away from my home. Then, I stopped going to the mosque and started school. The school I was going, had no building. Our classes were under trees and some small and old tents. Below the picture is our first school.
While I went to school, the subjects and all topics changed. Islamic teaching was taught as a subject only but other subjects were like Math, social science, Biology, Chemistry, Physics. School changed my worldview. Before that, I did not know anything about sciences, the only books were Quran and Mollah’s teachings.
When I reached high school, my intellectual revolution began. My walls of faith began to fall from that period on. Slowly, I doubted the beliefs that had been infused in my mind. I started leaving prayers, fasting and I left the mosque on religious occasions. While I graduated from high school, I was a secular. There were a lot of questions in my mind that being asked by mullahs was considered disbelief.
If we were to criticize the religion of Islam, the mullahs would call us infidels. As I entered university, in addition to university books, I studied many other books in various fields including philosophy, sociology, and psychology. Also, for the first time, I connected to the global network (internet) at the university. But during all this time I haven’t read any books on Christianity. And there were several reasons for this.
First: Afghanistan is a highly Islamic country, and access to Christian books was limited and somewhat inaccessible.
Second: For the first time that I started learning, everything started with a description of Islam. Teachings such as Islam is the last and most complete religion, God is one and has no partner, the Koran is a divine and holy book, Muhammad is the last prophet of God. With the advent of Muhammad, all other religions and scriptures were abolished. All I learned about Christianity and Jesus from Mullah was: Christians are infidels because they consider Jesus Christ to be a child of God. Their Bible is distorted. Jesus is alive, when the Imam of Time (Imam Mahdi) emerges, Jesus Christ will be one of his soldiers. Only this. But when I found out that Islam was not logical despite its great qualities, I thought Christianity might be even worse. I was disgusted with the religion and religiosity and violence that I saw around me. That is why I never thought to study Christianity.
Third: I did not meet anyone who was a Christian.
After two years of living here, one day of discussion with my wife about Islam, she suggested that if Islam could not convince me, I should go to other religions. My wife was a very religious person in Afghanistan, but when we came to Azerbaijan, her religious feelings diminished. Since
I had abandoned Islam, I was trying to make her like myself. I was one of the fiercest critics of Islam. The argument between me and my wife was not without effect. She eventually left the prayer and did not fast. But she believed that there is a God. I believed that all the failures of my life were due to Islam. I thought that because of the false teachings I had been given since childhood, it had destroyed my intellectual foundation.
One day after a hard argument, she said that you do not believe in God, that is why I am not calm. I was not in control. That day, she said you must believe in God in your way. She said that I can study Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism. She said if you found peace in any of these religions, accept it. But in the way you are now, it’s not right. But I made a condition for her. I asked her if I found the right way, would you come after me. She said yes, in case you got peace. Based on her suggestion, one day I was sitting with 3 of my friends who were also from Afghanistan in a coffee shop, I told them,
I want to become a Christian, who wants to go with me? They all said let’s go and see what they do in Church. That day, we went to a Catholic church. I and one of my friends know that because we have been worked near that church. We went there, there was a person, I started talking with him in the local language. But he did not know, because he was Russian. He went and brought another person, he introduced himself, father Joseph. He knew English well. I told him that we are here to become Christian, what does he think? He looked at each of us one by one and started to explain about church service.
He said every Sunday they have a worship service and we are interested the church door will be open to us. He asked us to come and see what they do there. Later if we got interested, he will say something. From Sunday, we started going to that church but my friends left very quickly after three-four sessions. But I was going regularly. I went there for almost 5 and half months, during this long time none of the priests said about Jesus with me.
The only thing which encourages me to keep going was the worship music. I enjoyed worship music. After that, I met a young man from my country. He was new in Baku. One day we were talking about religions, I told him that I go to church for a while. He suggested that he will also go and asked me to go together on Sunday. I did not know that he is a Christian, also he did not tell me about his faith.
After one month he said that the Catholic church is not good, they do want to provide information. He said the protestant church is better if I can find one. I asked an African young man if he knows some protestant church, he named BIF, but he did not know where the location is. So, while I came home, I asked google. I found BIF via google, I sent an email to BIF. Fortunately, someone replied to my email and gave me the address. After that, we started going BIF. While I went there, they hosted and treated me very well. I introduced myself to Mr. Steve Sarret. I started studying Bible with him in his home. He helped me to know Jesus.
