Christian woman to be executed

By Jim Killebrew

[May 27, 2014]  By now everyone likely has read the news or heard media reports about Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, a 27-year-old woman sentenced by a Sudanese judge to be executed for being a Christian, which is considered in Sudan’s Islam religion as apostasy.

The woman is eight months pregnant with her second child and had been accused of being an apostate because she married a Christian man and has refused to renounce her Christian faith. Under the Islamic sharia law under which Sudan has practiced as a national religion since 1983, the woman’s “crime” is considered an insult against the faith of the Islamic religion and is punishable by death. The woman had a three day period in which she could have renounced her Christian beliefs and accepted the Islamic faith in order to save herself from the punishment of being hanged until death.

Despite objections from U.N. spokespersons citing the inhumanity of a death sentence for choosing one’s religion, the authorities in Sudan have refused to pull back the sentence. Once her baby is born she will be given 100 lashes for “adultery” which consisted of living with a man who is Christian. She and her husband were married in 2012. At the birth of the couple’s second child Ms. Ibrahim will be hanged until she is dead. "This outrageous conviction must be overturned and Ms. Ibrahim must be immediately released," insisted the U.N. experts. But freedom of religion is not an option in any Muslim nation; especially where sharia law prevails.
 

Ms. Ibrahim was charged with publicly renouncing Islam, however, she had never professed that faith. It was only imposed on her because her father claimed the faith; therefore she must have the faith as well. During the three days she had to renounce her Christian faith she refused to accept the Muslim faith in which she never practiced. That action sealed her sentence of death.

Ms. Ibrahim is being held with her 20-month-old son in jail with her. She and her young son are being held at the Omdurman’s Women Prison near Khartoum. "The imposition and enforcement of the death penalty on pregnant women or recent mothers is inherently cruel and leads to a violation of the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," the U.N. officials said.

Have we remained silent too long against speaking out against those whose laws are so repressive? Where are the women's groups in this country who fought for women's rights, but say absolutely nothing about the wholesale destruction of women in the Middle East and Africa under Sharia law? Men are allowed to beat women, own them as property, divorce them on a whim, marry them against their will as teenagers, and treat them as if they are less intelligent than men. They control the lives of women in every way; even as to how they dress or are seen in public. American women, even those who are ultra liberal, travel to the Middle Eastern and African Islamic countries and wear the traditional dress to cover their faces and entire bodies. That is something they would never tolerate anywhere in the Western world. Yet here they are, never saying a word about the treatment of millions of women in the Islamic world. Where is the National Organization of Women? Where are the Feminist groups who protest to ensure "women's rights" around the world? They are conspicuously silent when it comes to defending their counterparts in the Islamic world.

The actions of the Islamic world that strips women of their human rights, kills them for the “honor” of the men who use them for their own pleasure causes them to lose all credibility in a world with sane reason. Their behavior removes all doubt they have the ability to dabble in terror and inflict great harm on those who are the most defenseless among us. Their credibility is lost and can only be regained by first accepting their behavior as detestable. Their credibility will improve with sane, reasonable people around the world when those same people begin to hear a large number of Imams, Ayatollahs and other high-ranking persons in the Islamic faith stand up and denounce the atrocious practices seen daily under the administration of sharia law as well as punish those who are creating violence against others, including their own women in their culture.

[By JIM KILLEBREW]