UPDATE 6/10/14: Brother of Meriam Ibrahim, Sudanese Christian mother, sentenced to hang for not converting to Islam, agrees that she should be executed. Watch exclusive CNN interview. [Very sick and twisted man. He turned his sister in to authorites. (emphasis mine)] h/t Bare Naked Islam
UPDATE Daily Mail UK 5/29/14: Mother who is facing death penalty for marrying a Christian was forced to give birth with her legs shackled in Sudanese jail
A Sudanese woman sentenced to death for marrying a Christian was forced to give birth with her legs chained, it has been revealed today.
Meriam Ibrahim was shackled as her baby daughter was born in jail in Sudan where she is awaiting execution for marrying a Christian U.S. citizen.
Amid the joy of seeing his child for the first time, her husband Daniel Wani has spoken of his anger at the treatment she received during labour.
Morning Star News
written by Elizabeth Kendal
May 24, 2014
The sentence of 100 lashes and death by hanging that a Sudanese judge handed to Meriam Ibrahim is consistent with Islamic law, contrary to Islamic leaders and others who cite her case as an anomaly.
According to the Koran, fitna – that is, anything that “averts people from the way of Allah,” anything that “causes disbelief” and therefore chaos – is to be regarded as the greatest of all evils. Fitna is worse than killing (i.e., killing is the lesser of the two evils) – and fitna must be purged (Sura 2:217). Be assured, nothing generates fitna like the presence of joyful, thriving apostates. Furthermore, apostasy is regarded as a betrayal of the Muslim nation akin to treason. According to Islam and sharia (Islamic law), the penalty for apostasy is death. This is backed up by the famous Hadith (saying of Muhammad): “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Sahih Bukhari Vol. 9, book 84, number 57).
Concerning men, all schools of sharia (Islamic law) agree that an adult male convicted of apostasy must be killed (unless he is not of sound mind), and that boys convicted of apostasy must be imprisoned until they are of age and then, if they persist in their apostasy, they must be killed.
Concerning women, three of the four main Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence – the Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi’i schools – teach that women apostates must likewise be executed. Only the Hanafi (from Kufa, Sth Iraq) and Shia schools teach that women apostates should be imprisoned until they recant. (This is essentially because they view women as so insignificant that they are actually incapable of generating fitna, and therefore do not require elimination.
Sudanese Islamic jurisprudence follows the Shafi’i school.
Generally, scholars interpret Sura 4:137 as grounds for a Muslim having three chances or three days to repent/recant before forgiveness is denied.
For an excellent study on apostasy in Islam, see Political and Legal Status of Apostates in Islam
by Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (December 2013).
Unlike Christianity, where religious identity is a matter of personal faith, in Islam, religious identity is a political matter, a matter for the Islamic state or nation.
In Islam, a child inherits their religion from their father and is registered as such from birth. Consequently, Muslim men are free to marry Christian women; in fact in some quarters, Muslim men are actually encouraged to marry Christians – sometimes they are even financially rewarded for marrying Christian women – for this not only removes child-bearers from the Christian community but also ensures the children of Christian women are deemed Muslim from birth.
Conversely, Islamic law bans Muslim women from marrying Christian men. Any Christian man who wants to marry a Muslim woman must first convert to Islam to ensure her children are born Muslim.
When a Muslim parent abandons Islam, they automatically lose custody of their children because it is imperative that the children be raised Muslim.
When a nominally Christian father converts to Islam in order to take a Muslim woman as a second wife, his Christian children are deemed and registered Muslim upon his conversion. From that point, his forcibly converted daughters are obliged by law to marry Muslim men and bear Muslim children, while his forcibly converted sons, even though free to marry Christian women, will produce Muslim children that must be raised as Muslims following Islam and Sharia.
Add to all this, the fact that Muslims are captives for whom leaving is forbidden upon penalty of death, and you have a truly brilliant (albeit insidious) strategy for permanent exponential growth of the Muslim community; growth that is guaranteed not only at the expense of other religious communities, but even in the virtual absence of religious conversions.
Clearly, anyone who says the rulings in Khartoum violate sharia is either misinformed or is seeking to misinform.
Islam underpins not only these rulings out of Khartoum, but much Islamic violence, much Islamic repression and many thousands of honor killings committed annually along with the impunity afforded the perpetrators.
According to Islam and sharia (as distinct from individual Muslims), Meriam Ibrahim is a Muslim because she was born to a Muslim father. According to Islam and sharia, Daniel Wani should have converted to Islam before marrying her in 2012. Had Wani complied, submitting to sharia, then the marriage would have been legal, the children would be Muslim, and Muslims and the state would be happy. While Wani may have failed in his responsibilities according to Islam and sharia, the Islamic state will ensure that wrongs will be set right by denying him custody of his own children and ensuring they are raised as Muslims.
While Ibrahim insists she was raised as a Christian by an Ethiopian Christian mother, making the ruling unfair and unjust as she never committed apostasy, a Sudanese official says Meriam was raised Muslim by a Muslim mother from a Muslim tribe and that she disappeared for several years before turning up again professing Christ and married to a Christian man.
The details, however, are totally irrelevant and must not be allowed to become a distraction. Every human being – no matter how or where they were raised and irrespective of their occupation or status – must be free to seek after God.
The debate must be about Islam’s total lack of liberty, its inherent inhumanity and its gross unreasonableness in suggesting that a good God would compel people to worship and serve him against their heart and conscience.
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Morning Star News
written by Staff
April 28, 2014
JUBA, South Sudan – A pregnant woman in Khartoum, Sudan raised as a Christian faces the death penalty for “leaving Islam” because her father was Muslim, sources said.
Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, 27, and her Christian husband also have a toddler son. As marriage to a Christian man is prohibited for a Muslim woman in Sudan, Ibrahim also could be given 100 lashes for “adultery,” the sources said. If convicted of “apostasy” and “adultery,” the whipping and execution would be administered soon after giving birth to her second child, due next month, according to a rights worker for Justice Center Sudan in Khartoum.
“We are fighting for Meriam’s life, freedom, and fair treatment – according to the law, if she had been a Muslim she should be killed soon after she gives birth to her child,” said the rights worker, whose identity was withheld for security reasons.
Married to a South Sudanese Christian who obtained U.S. citizenship several years ago, Ibrahim’s nightmare has included denial of bail, insufficient medical care for both her and her unborn child, beatings in prison and a U.S. Embassy that has offered little help, sources said.
“Meriam needs treatment every month to keep the unborn baby still in the mother’s womb, but no medical help has been allowed,” her husband, Daniel Wani, reported to Justice Center Sudan. “They are denying my wife her rights to fair treatment and my rights to visit and see my son.”
Their 20-month-old son, Martin Wani, is staying in prison with his mother, as Sudanese authorities have prohibited the boy’s father from caring for him because he is a Christian. Ibrahim has been incarcerated since February.
Justice Center Sudan is fighting the court’s charges of apostasy and adultery based constitutional rights to equality and freedom of religion. The center says constitutional rights should outweigh sharia (Islamic law). The Sudanese constitution stipulates Islamic law as a source of legislation, however, and since the secession of South Sudan in July 2011, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has vowed to make Sudan a more strictly Islamic country.
Rights workers are trying to pressure the government to give Ibrahim, a medical doctor who graduated from Khartoum University, fair treatment in prison and allow the baby to be with his father.
Accusing Wani of converting a Muslim woman to another religion and marrying her – although Sudanese law does not explicitly ban proselytism – authorities have taken Wani’s passport and forbidden him to travel.
Sudan’s notorious Public Order Court in El Haj Yousif in Khartoum North charged Ibrahim with apostasy and adultery on March 4, sources told Morning Star News. No one has been executed for apostasy in Sudan since the Sudan Criminal Code of 1991 made it punishable by the death penalty.
The couple also faces cancellation of their marriage, rights workers said.
“According to Islamic laws, if a Muslim woman gets married to a non-Muslim man, then their marriage is not acknowledged legally,” one rights worker said. “She is then committing adultery, and her children are not recognized by law as children of legal marriage. That is why she is facing the charges.”
Khartoum state’s “public order” laws are based largely on strict Islamic law and give Public Order Police and judges wide latitude in arresting and sentencing suspects.
Ibrahim was born in a small town in western Sudan to an Ethiopian Orthodox mother and a Muslim Sudanese father. Her father disappeared from her life when she was 6 years old, and her Ethiopian Orthodox mother raised her in the Christian faith, sources said.
When life became hard for her and her mother, they decided to move to Khartoum in search of better school opportunities for Ibrahim and employment for her mother, sources said. Finding refuge in a neighborhood in Khartoum, they connected with a small church, and their lives moved on, according to Justice Center Sudan.
Ibrahim progressed in school and graduated from the prestigious School of Medicine at Khartoum University. Her mother died in 2011, leaving Ibrahim with a small but supportive community. She and Wani met at her church when he was visiting Khartoum from the United States; they soon fell in love and were married in a small church ceremony in Khartoum in 2012, Wani said.
Last year someone who said he was a relative of Ibrahim opened a case against them in Halat Kuku Court of Khartoum North for alleged “adultery” under article 146 of the Sudan Criminal Code because of her marriage to a Christian, rights workers said. Wani was accused of proselytizing a Muslim, and eventually authorities added the apostasy charge to Ibrahim.
A person claiming to be her relative last year told authorities that Ibrahim had left Islam, and without listening to any witnesses who came to testify in her defense, the court ruled that her name was actually Abrar Elhadi Muhammad Abdallah Abugadeen and that she was born to Muslim Sudanese parents. Morning Star News
Three witnesses from western Sudan came to Khartoum in March of this year to testify of Ibrahim’s lifelong Christian faith, they said.
“I am a Christian,” Ibrahim told the court in Khartoum on March 4, having provided her marriage certificate showing that she was a Christian and that the wedding ceremony was conducted in a Christian chapel in Khartoum in 2012.
Though no one has been executed for apostasy in Sudan since the 1991 law took effect, courts have forced people accused of leaving Islam to renounce their faiths.
While in jail Ibrahim has been abused physically and emotionally, according to her husband. Muslim scholars have been visiting her, telling her to “turn back” to the religion of her father, but she has refused, he said.
One of the prison guards, Kawther Hassen, has mistreated Ibrahim and not allowed visitations or medical help. Her husband told Morning Star News that that a Muslim woman in the jail has incited other Muslims to make life difficult for Ibrahim.
“She is psychologically tired,” Wani said. “My wife was never a Muslim. As an American citizen, I ask the people and government of the USA to help me.”
The couple’s toddler boy is a U.S. citizen by virtue of his father’s U.S. citizenship, but Wani said U.S. Embassy officials in Khartoum have told him he must prove he is the father with a DNA test before they would try to help.
“I will have to take a DNA sample in Khartoum, then send it to the USA for testing,” Wani said. “I have provided wedding documents and the baby’s birth certificate, and doors were closed on his face.”
Wani told Morning Star News that when he called the U.S. Embassy on April 9, a representative in Khartoum told him they did not care about the case.
“I have tried to apply for papers to travel to the USA with my wife and child, but the American Embassy in Sudan did not help me,” Wani said. “My son is an American citizen living in a difficult situation in prison.”
U.S. Embassy personnel declined to speak about the matter to Morning Star News.
At a hearing for Ibrahim on April 18, the court requested more witnesses to testify that she never practiced Islam, according to attorneys. Wani said those wishing to help can contact Justice Center Sudan at justicecentersudan@gmail.com.
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