by Worthy News Africa Bureau Staff
MOGADISHU (Worthy News) – A mother of three children in Somalia says she struggles to survive as Muslim relatives have driven her from their home and threaten to kill her for abandoning Islam and turning to faith in Christ.
The 31-year-old woman, whose name wasn’t published due to security concerns, also said her husband recently divorced her following her March expulsion from the family homestead in Jamaame village, in the Kismayo area.
Yet the mother of children ages 5, 7, and 9 does not regret her decision “to accept” Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.
A Christian worker had shown her and her children the Bible-based Jesus Film on Christmas Eve, she recalled. “On January 20, I then decided to surrender my life to the Lordship of Issa [Jesus] and since that time, I experienced amazing peace in my heart and life,” she was quoted as telling Christian news agency Morning Star News by telephone.
“I do not regret embracing Christianity; I have great peace in my heart. Issa [Jesus] has provided for me and the children for the last three months, and I know He will continue providing.”
She said a Christian worker had shown her and her children the Bible-based Jesus Film on Christmas Eve.
SURRENDER LIFE
“On January 20, I then decided to surrender my life to the Lordship of Issa, and since that time, I experienced amazing peace in my heart and life,” she was quoted as telling Morning Star News by telephone. “But as I continued watching the film while my husband was doing small business about 100 kilometers (62 miles) away in Lower Juba [region in southern Somalia], I felt the need to share it with my parents.”
On March 1, during the Muslim fasting period of Ramadan, she showed the film to her mother. After her mother asked questions she could not answer, she invited her father to watch, and the family viewed the film together on March 4.
“While watching the film on the suffering of Jesus on the cross, I found myself shedding tears and uttering the words, ‘Oh, an innocent Son of God suffering for the sins of humanity,’” she said. “My father was shocked to see me crying and asked why I was crying. He felt troubled by the utterance of Jesus as the Son of God.”
Her father told her that Christ was not the Son of God but only one of the prophets sent by Allah, adding, “The film is misleading and not from God – it is led by the Devil.”
When she protested that he was incorrect, he allegedly replied, “I have no room for you in my house anymore. Just go away with your children,” she said.
Her father immediately phoned her husband. “My husband sided with my father that I should go away, and that I should not return to him,” she said.
MOTHER’S INTERVENTION
Her father gave her three months to decide whether to return to Islam and her husband, she said.
“My mother tried to intervene, but my father became more furious and chased us, together with my mother, away,” she said. “After a month, my mother denounced the Christian faith and returned to my father.”
On June 10, she told Morning Star News that her husband had divorced her according to Islamic law.
“When I received a phone call from my husband concerning my faith in Issa, I told him that I am still a believer in Issa as my Lord and Savior,” she said. “My husband then pronounced the Islamic phrase, ‘I divorce you,’ and that was the end of my marriage with him.”
Relatives and other members of the Muslim community have threatened to kill her, she said.
“I have received threatening messages from two of my relatives that it is better that they kill me than me be a Christian, since I am have become an apostate and should be killed,” she said.
WOMAN FLEEING
On Friday (June 13), she fled with her children to an area closer to the border with Kenya, Morning Star News reported.
Since then, she said, they have been moving from village to village, searching for manual work to meet their daily needs. She said she is in desperate need of financial support to rent a house, pay the school fees for her children, and start a small business to support them.
“My prayer is that Issa, who changed my life, may touch my family too,” she added. “Please, I need the prayers from Christians at this difficult time. If God guides me to reach Kenya, I am sure my needs and those of the children will be met by Christians living in different parts of the world.”
Somalia’s constitution establishes Islam as the state religion and prohibits the propagation of any other religion or faith, according to the U.S. State Department. It also requires that laws comply with sharia (Islamic law) principles, with no exceptions in application for non-Muslims.
The death penalty for “apostasy”, the word used for abandoning Islam, is viewed as part of the strict interpretation of Islamic law. An Islamic extremist group in Somalia, al-Shabab, allied to the terror organization al-Qaida, adheres to that teaching and has killed numerous non-Muslims.
Al-Shabab or its sympathizers have also killed several non-local people in northern Kenya since 2011, when Kenyan forces led an African coalition into Somalia against the rebels after terror attacks on tourists and others on Kenya’s coast.
Somalia is ranked 2nd on Christian support group Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the 50 countries where it says it is most difficult to be a Christian. (With reporting by Worthy News’ Stefan J. Bos.)
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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