Sudan: Pregnant Christian Convicted of Apostasy, Adultery

By Joseph DeCaro, Worthy News Correspondent

KHARTOUM, SUDAN (Worthy News)– As the U.S. Celebrated Mother’s Day, a Christian carrying her second child to term has been convicted of adultery and apostasy, penalties that are punishable in Sudan by 100 lashes and death, respectively, according to International Christian Concern.

Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, a pregnant practicing physician in Western Sudan, is married to Daniel Wani, a South Sudanese Christian. But as a Sudanese, Ibrahim is considered a Muslim by birth through her father’s Islamic faith, making her marriage to a Christian illegal. According to sharia, any Muslim woman who marries a non-Muslim man commits adultery; therefore, any children that arise from that marriage are illegitimate in the eyes of Islam.

Ibrahim was arrested in February by Sudanese authorities and arbitrarily detained in the Omdurman Federal Women’s Prison along with her 20-month-old son. Both are separated from Wani who — because of his wife’s “adultery” — is legally ineligible to assume custody of their children, both of whom will be remanded to the Sudanese State in case of Ibrahim’s execution, or prolonged imprisonment.

So, unless Ibrahim is pressured to convert back to the faith of her father, the full sentence against her will undoubtedly be carried out following the birth of her unborn child, which is expected in June.

“We grieve today at the sentencing to death of a mother, pregnant with her second child, for the expression of her faith and legal marriage to a practicing Christian,” said William Stark, ICC’s Regional Manager. “The handing down of such an extreme punishment under a law inspired by the al-Turabi radicalism of the early al-Bashir regime brings into question the direction Sudan intends to head following South Sudanese succession. Having embraced policies of Islamization and Arabization in the past, ICC fears Meriam could be the first of many more Christians to suffer under an increasingly radicalized Sudanese government intent on enforcing Shari’ah law throughout the land.”