Meriam Ibrahim Safe in Secret Location

06-23-2014
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Meriam Ibrahim, the Christian mother of two sentenced to death by a Sudanese court for committing apostasy, has been freed from prison and is now in a secret location.

An appellate court ruled Monday that a lower court had erred when it sentenced her to death. Meriam’s lawyer disclosed that his client was released and reunited with her husband, Daniel.

I’ve learned that Meriam has been taken to an undisclosed, confidential location where she is safe from militant Islamists who may want to kill her. She and her family received numerous death threats during her imprisonment.

She was jailed for leaving Islam, but Meriam always maintained that she had never practiced the Islamic faith. Her father was a Muslim who left the family when she was young. Her Ethiopian mother raised Meriam as a Christian.

Though Meriam’s husband fought to retain custody of their 20 month old son Martin, the toddler was forced to remain with Meriam in prison because Sudanese authorities did not recognize the legitimacy of Meriam’s marriage to Daniel, who is a Christian. Meriam was also forced to give birth in prison to daughter, Maya.

Under Islamic law, a Muslim woman is prohibited from marrying a Christian man. Meriam was considered to be Muslim because her father was a Muslim. Thus, when she insisted she was a Christian, the Islamist government found her guilty of apostasy, a crime punishable by death.

And because she gave birth to Daniel’s son, she was considered an adulterer who was sentenced to receive 100 lashes as punishment.

But now her nightmare is over, thanks to political pressure and your prayers.

Thank God. And please continue to pray for Meriam, husband Daniel, their son Martin, and newborn daughter, Maya. Daniel is an American, and he’s trying to bring Meriam and the children to the United States.

Pray that the U.S. State Department will accept (if it hasn’t already) Meriam and the children as religious asylum seekers and then grant them visas. It was slow to help and even questioned Daniel's paternity of the children.

And pray that God will bring down these archaic apostasy and blasphemy laws. No one should ever be punished or executed for embracing Christianity, or any other faith.

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