Christian Persecution Mar/Apr 2018
KENYA—A group of Somali Muslims recently broke into the home of a Somali Christian widow and brutally attacked her three children in a small Kenyan town outside Nairobi.
Hadiya, a widowed immigrant from Somalia, was attending a funeral during the attack. The Muslims knocked on her front door early in the morning while her 17-year-old daughter, 13-year-old son, and 21-year-old son were asleep.
The sons awoke and asked who was at the door. The Muslim men refused to identify themselves and smashed a window to enter, according to the older son.
Then one of the men shouted, “We have warned you several times to stop taking the children to church. You have become an embarrassment to our clan as well as the entire Muslim community. We are here today to finish you and your children.”
The gang beat Hadiya’s three children until neighbors came to the rescue. “When we arrived at the scene of the incident, the attackers fled,” one neighbor told Morning Star News. “We took the three to a nearby clinic before their mother arrived and then transferred them to a government health center, where the youngest child was discharged, while two who were seriously injured were admitted for four days.”
The younger son suffered injuries to his left leg, neck, and chest; the older son sustained injuries to his head, chest, and back from a blunt object; and the daughter received heavy blows and kicks, resulting in a bloody nose and rib injury, according to a medical report.<
“We are living in great fear and experience sleepless nights,” Hadiya said. “It is not safe for us to stay in this particular place. We need prayers and financial help at this difficult moment.”
Most Somalis believe all Somalis are born Muslim and therefore should be charged with apostasy and killed if they become Christians, according to Islamic law.
Hadiya fled Somalia more than 13 years ago after the death of her first husband. She has eight children, two of whom are from her second husband, who recanted his Christian faith amid a wave of persecution and returned to Somalia in 2010.
Hadiya said her family has suffered many attacks since embracing Christ. Three years ago, after filing a police complaint about an attack by Somali Muslims in Kenya in 2014, at least 10 Islamic elders warned her she was risking her life by doing so.
Last year, Somali Muslims attacked another of her adult sons and beat him until he became unconscious. Five years earlier, Somalian neighbors seriously injured the same son after learning his family had become Christians. They hit him with a metal bar on his forehead and face, stabbed his hand, and left him for dead.
“My family has experienced difficult times since the time we embraced the Christian faith, but God has been always coming to our rescue and meeting our needs,” Hadiya said. “We are grateful to the church and good Samaritans who have stood with my family in trying moments. We are at a crossroads. But how long will this kind of life and persecution continue?”
“We will not recant the Christian faith,” she said. “We will continue putting our faith in God.”
Kenya ranks 18th on Open Doors’ 2017 World Watch List of the 50 countries where Christians experience the worst persecution.
by Morning Star News
To read the full report, click here.
