While most 12-year-olds were worried about social structures at school, their social media presence or just the awkwardness of becoming a teenager, Rifqa Bary was living in constant fear.

Because this young Muslim girl had found Jesus.

Bary moved to America when she was 8-years-old from Sri Lanka after two tragic incidents.  The first, she was blinded in one eye accidentally by her brother.  The second, she was intimately abused by a family member.  Eventually, the family made their way to Ohio.

She said that she was immediately faced with a life of shame because in Muslim culture victims are shamed.

“In our culture in America, when someone is abused it is the one that is abusing that is punished and there are consequences. Yet, in my Islamic culture, the victim is the one where the shame is put on them,” Bary explained. “I use this quote, I was half seen as a ‘blind picture of imperfection.’ So in my family, they were really serious about maintaining our family image, and so we moved completely to run from the shame that could potentially harm our family.”

She said she was considering ending her life.

Then a friend at school introduced her to Christianity and invited her to church.  She discovered Jesus and the true meaning of love.

But she had to hide her new faith in Christ.

“… When my parents would go to sleep I would stay up in the bathroom and read, and so there was a serious feeling of threat that I felt,” she shared.

But it didn’t stop her going deeper into Jesus.

“It was love,” said Bary. “That is the distinction that I can see even today, years later. In Islam, from what I experienced, there was fear and a lot of anger. You obey Allah because you are afraid of being punished. And as a Christian we obey because we love God.”

“I would do it all again because it has made me who I am and I have a greater sense of compassion,” she said. “… I love my family and I desperately want them to see and experience the freedom and mercy I have found in Jesus, and I forgive them.”