Aisha was a nineteen-year-old single woman from an Islamic country. Though her parents were fairly conservative, they believed in education and a daughter's right to advanced degrees. When she was informed that her wealthy family had arranged for her to attend university in America, she was frightened at first. She had heard about the depravity of the West most of her life. The thought of being in a pagan, Christian country was disconcerting, but somehow exciting at the same time.
The sights, smells, and sounds of America were beyond sensory overload at first. She survived by spending time with other Muslim women, increasing her commitment to prayer, and communicating frequently with family back home. She stood out on the university campus due to her conservative style of clothing.
After a few months she realized that she was beginning to like her adopted home and the university setting. At first, this attraction troubled her. Still, she reveled in the environment of open, intellectual discussion. Though most were not as wealthy as her family back home, she became more and more comfortable with the western single women in her widening circle of friends at the university. She was uncomfortable with the open sexuality and the availability of alcohol, but she enjoyed the relaxed way that university women dressed and she appreciated their ability to discuss life issues with others her age — and often with men present! She began to sense that the Christian West was more than the drugs, sex, crime, and abortion that she had heard about her entire life. Aisha began to question those stereotypes that had always characterized the West in her country's press and mindset.
Curious by nature, and wanting to spread her wings further, she began quietly to visit various churches in her city, sometimes going with one or two of her Muslim friends. Even though their parents were continents away, they could not help but look over their shoulders as they entered this forbidden territory, nervously giggling as they entered the church. Unlike her Muslim girlfriends, Aisha found herself returning again and again, even after her friends tired of going once the novelty wore off.
Single women believers in the church, who were also at the university, befriended her, inviting Aisha to come earlier for Bible Study and other events tailored for students. The more she attended these small groups the deeper her soul was moved the more questions she-asked;and the more-she doubted what she believed before coming to America.
Excited with Aisha's search for spiritual truth, these committed believers took her to the pastor for university students. He and, eventually, the senior pastor began to counsel her and they led her to pray a prayer of faith in Jesus. She trustingly followed pastoral advice in announcing her new faith the next Sunday before the larger church family to loud praise and applause. Soon she allowed these adult men of the church to touch her as they lowered her into the waters of baptism. Though she sometimes felt like a highly prized specimen in a public zoo, she loved and appreciated her new church family and the attention they lavished on her. She was mentioned by name from the pulpit, and seeing her photo on the church membership board made her smile with gratitude. There was even an article about her conversion on the church's website. Her faith was prized and celebrated by the church.
None of this went unnoticed by her Muslim classmates, both men and women. While many of the other women lauded her courage, they were quick to caution her about her extreme behavior. Though not overly surprised, she was hurt by the veiled threats from her male Muslim friends. Phone calls increased from her family. She found it harder and harder to evade the increasingly invasive questions that they were asking. More and more she found herself talking to her father after brief moments on the phone with her mother and sisters. He began to insist that she return to her country for the holidays and in between school semesters. She struggled to find ways to remain in the States. She shared her unease with her church family and they began to pray publicly for her as she became more isolated from her family and other Muslim students on campus.
Then one day she disappeared.
Her church and believing friends searched for her. Her Muslim friends would not answer their questions. Her professors did not know where she had gone. All that the school officials could or would share was that Aisha had withdrawn from the university.
More than a year later some of Aisha's believing friends in America discovered what had happened to her when she was able to send them an e-mail from her home country. Her older brother had suddenly arrived in the United States to force her to return home. On behalf of her family, surrounded by other Muslim students, he had demanded that she sever her ties with her Christian friends, stop going to the church, and return to her Islamic faith. They isolated her on campus, were always with her in public, and relieved her of her cell phone. When she resisted renouncing her faith and her Christian friends, her brother escorted her to the airport and flew with her to their home country.
Shortly after arriving home, at the age of twenty-one, Aisha was married to a sixty¬three-year-old conservative Muslim businessman who was a friend of her father. She became his second wife and disappeared into his home. In a brief moment of not being monitored, she had e-mailed her friends in the America asking them to stop trying to contact her since there was nothing they could do. She was now a Muslim wife of a Muslim man.
When this terrible news was shared within the broader church family, one gracious woman was heard to cry, "But this cannot be true. This cannot happen. This is a free country."
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