World
Christian Perseverance

Christian Perseverance

From the Middle East to Africa to China, Christians are being killed for their faith, much like most of the apostles. Despite the persecution, Christianity and Christians go on. ...
William F. Jasper

Meriam Ibrahim sat shackled in Khartoum’s Omdurman Federal Women’s Prison, sentenced to 100 lashes and death by hanging. Her 20-month-old son, Martin Wani, who shared her prison cell, was ill from the filth and the stress of the imprisonment. And now, Ibrahim, a Christian Sudanese who was pregnant when arrested, would deliver her second child in prison. Her legs were swollen from being shackled. Not only was she denied transfer to a hospital and medical treatment, the 27-year-old mother was forced to deliver her baby daughter on the floor, while still being shackled.

What heinous crime did Ibrahim stand convicted of to deserve such cruel treatment? She was arrested in February 2014 and accused of apostasy and adultery for abandoning Islam and marrying a Christian. However, Meriam Ibrahim insists that she never was a Muslim, that she is a life-long Christian, raised by her Christian mother. Her father, a Muslim, had abandoned the family when she was very young. She married Daniel Wani, a Sudanese Christian, who is a citizen of the United States of America. But the Sudanese court ruled that she should have followed the Muslim faith of her father. Her Christian marriage was not valid, said the court, so her marital relationship with Daniel Wani amounted to adultery. She was ordered to renounce her Christian faith and convert to Islam. She refused. Muslim mullahs visited her prison cell daily to recite the Koran and badger her to convert. Still she refused.

A worldwide “Save Meriam” campaign by various Christian ministries and human rights organizations drew global attention to the imprisoned mother’s tragic plight. With international condemnation building and Western governments threatening to cut off aid to the Sudanese government, the brutal regime of Omar al-Bashir, on June 23, 2014, released Ibrahim and her children from prison. Ibrahim, her husband, and children were on their way to freedom and a new life together in the United States. Jubilant celebrations around the world soon took another dramatic turn, however, when the family was re-arrested the following day at the Khartoum airport, on trumped-up charges of forgery and travel document “irregularities.” This detainment, thankfully, proved to be temporary — a last-ditch harassment — and on June 24 the heroic Meriam Ibrahim, her husband, Daniel Wani; son, Martin Wani; and infant daughter, Maya; departed from Sudan aboard an Italian government jet, accompanied by Italy’s vice minister for foreign affairs, Lapo Pistelli.

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