Hatun Tash: ‘Sometimes I get beaten. I keep going until Muslims hear the Gospel’

The ex-Muslim on confronting Islam, suffering for the gospel and why she won’t stop sharing the good news whatever the cost

Hatun Tash has been beaten, stabbed and spat at. Her life has been threatened and her home broken into. She has been forced to live in a tent, moving from place to place in order to stay safe. For the past four years, she has had no fixed address. As she talks matter-of-factly about all of this, it’s hard not to think of Paul’s description of the suffering he also faced for the sake of the gospel in 2 Corinthians 11. Tash has not yet been shipwrecked, but the rest sounds strikingly similar.

Tash, a former Muslim, has dedicated herself to evangelising those whose faith she used to share. But her tactics (on one occasion drilling holes in an ornate Qur’an) have been controversial. Radical Muslims have literally tried to kill her because of it. In 2023, a Muslim convert was sentenced to 24 years in prison for plotting to shoot her dead at Speakers’ Corner – the area of London’s Hyde Park famous for free speech, open-air preaching and fiery public debates. The year before, Tash won £10,000 compensation from the police after they wrongly arrested her following an assault at the same location by a group of Muslim men. 

You might expect Christians to be sympathetic to Tash, but apparently she regularly receives…