The mother of three in Somali children is struggling to survive after Muslim relatives kicked her out of the house and threatened to kill her in order to accept Christ, she said.
The 31-year-old woman’s husband recently divorced her following her expulsion from her family’s home in Jamame village, Kiss Mayo in March, the mother of children aged 5, 7 and 9 said.
“I have no regrets about accepting Christianity. I have great peace in my heart,” the mother, who was unidentified for security reasons, told Morning Star News. “Issa (Jesus) has been offering to me and my children for the past three months. I know he will continue to provide.”
A Christian worker was showing her and her children a Jesus movie on Christmas Eve, she said.
“On January 20th, I decided to entrust my life to the Lord of Issa. Since then I have experienced the incredible peace of mind and life,” she told Morningstar News over the phone. “But when I continued watching movies while my husband was doing small business about 100 kilometres in Lower Juba, I felt that I needed to share it with my parents.”
On March 1st, during Ramadan, she showed her mother a movie. Her mother asked her that she couldn’t answer, so she invited her father to watch the movie. The family saw it together on March 4th.
“While watching the film about Jesus’ suffering on the cross, I found myself crying and uttering the words, “Oh, the sinless son of God, suffering for the sin of humanity,” she said. “My father was shocked to see me crying and asked why I was crying. He felt troubled by Jesus’ remarks as the Son of God.”
Her father told her that Christ was not a Son of God, but only one of the prophets sent by Allah.
When she protested and replied that he was wrong, he replied, “I have no room for you in my house anymore. I’ll just go with your kids,” she said.
Her father immediately called her husband.
“My husband should leave with my father and I should not return to him,” she said.
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 dad was even more furious and chased us with my mother,” she said. “A month later, my mother condemned the Christian faith and returned to her father.”
On June 10, she told Morning Star News that her husband divorced her in accordance with Islamic law.
“When I received a call from my husband about my faith in Issa, I told him that I was a follower of Issa as my Lord and Savior,” she said. “My husband pronounced the Islamic phrase “I’m going to divorce you.” That was the end of my marriage to him. ”
Officials and other members of the Muslim community threatened to kill her, she said.
“I received threatening messages from two of my relatives that they would be better off killing me because they should be apostate and be killed than I would become a Christian,” she said.
On Friday (June 13th), she fled with her children to an area near the border with Kenya. Since then, they have moved from village to village, looking for manual work for their daily needs. She said she is eager to financially support her to rent a house, provide her children with tuition fees and start a small business to keep them.
“My prayers are that Issa, who changed my life, may touch my family,” she said. “We need a Christian prayer during this difficult time. If God guides me to reach Kenya, I am sure my needs and the needs of my children will be met by Christians living in different parts of the world.”
According to the US State Department, Somali’s constitution establishes Islam as a national religion and prohibits the spread of other religions. It is also required that the law comply with the principles of Sharia (Islamic law) without exception to the application of non-Muslims.
The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law, according to the mainstream schools of Islamic law. Al-Shabaab, a Somali Islamic extremist group, is allied with al-Qaeda and is accommodating education.
Al-Shabaab or Al-Shabaab sympathizers have killed non-local people in northern Kenya since 2011, when Kenyan forces led African coalitions to rebels against rebels in response to terrorist attacks on tourists and others on Kenya’s coast.
Somalia ranks second on the 2025 watch list of Christian support groups Opendoas in 50 countries where becoming a Christian is the most difficult.
