News

Somalia: Young Mother Loses Children and Everything Else to Follow Christ

October 5, 2019

This is not, unfortunately, the only such story of Christian persecution in Somalia. Here at ChristianPersecution.com we reported on a quite similar incident last August, in which a woman who converted to Christianity was beaten and then divorced by her husband. In this case, emulating some of the most renowned of the holy martyrs, Sa’aada Hussein left everything behind to follow Christ. May all of us value our faith that highly, and may our merciful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ give Sa’aada the strength to endure her trials.

“Young Mother in Somalia Loses Children – and Everything Else – to Follow Christ,” Morning Star News, October 4, 2019:

NAIROBI, Kenya (Morning Star News) – Sa’aada Hussein’s husband didn’t seem to be a very devoted Muslim by Somalia’s strict standards, so she hoped it would be safe to ask him for permission to read the Bible.

After all, he chewed khat, a plant in East Africa that produces euphoria, which Islamic leaders said was forbidden. Though she had grown up watching family members practice Muslim rituals in Bosaso in northern Somalia, Hussein had secretly put her faith in Christ in her young 20s.

After marrying a Muslim in 2010, she had suppressed her faith but secretly recommitted her life to Christ in 2017. She then had two young children as she began to read anew, in secret, a Bible that an ex-boyfriend had given her before she married.

“I feared that my husband might report my belief in Issa [Jesus] to my extended family members, so I remained a secret Christian for one year,” Hussein, 32, told Morning Star News by phone. “In January 2019, I decided to request my husband to permit me to read the Bible, but he refused despite the fact that he was not a strong Muslim who chewed khat.”

Instead, he reported her to extended family members in a country where leaving Islam is punishable by death; even if a court in the sharia (Islamic law)-ruled country might not execute her, in many families relatives would stone her to death.

“On Feb. 20, I was summoned by the family and clan members on the issue of reading the Bible,” Hussein told Morning Star News. “I knew the outcome would be disastrous, so I left him.”

She left – everything, including her children, now 6 and 8 years old – that very day. She also left behind her livelihood, a successful job selling clothes in the family business.

Fearing for her life and knowing that Islamic law gives custody of children to the Muslim father when a Muslim wife leaves Islam and is summarily divorced, she left her family and livelihood rather than renounce Christ, she said.

“Because of cultural issues and oppression of women in Islam, I lost my children, parents and relatives as a result of my conversion, which was an extremely painful ordeal, and my spirit was wounded,” she said. “It is difficult to reach my children now going on eight months.”…

Somalia is ranked 3rd on Christian support group Open Doors’ 2019 World Watch List of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.