Shortly after their father died, Amara and her older brother left their village in the Somali desert to live with their uncle in the city. Shortly after moving in with her uncle, Amara began speaking with her new neighbors. To her surprise, she learned that they were not Somali β and they were Christians. When I met my new neighbors, they were different. She noticed that before each meal, they thanked God for their food in such a casual way that they sounded as if they were talking to their father.
One week before Christmas in , Abdi was driving to work as usual in Mogadishu when the sound of gunfire erupted all around his car. Al-Shabab had gotten their man. Abdi was one of fewer than secret believers in Somalia.
Like most of the others, he had been raised as a Muslim but later found new life in Christ. His first experience with al-Shabab had occurred in , when they found pages of a Bible in his house while randomly searching his neighborhood. Abdi was immediately dragged away to an underground concrete cell, where he was tortured with a wooden baton and locked in a room with dead bodies. Several weeks after his abduction, Abdi took the opportunity to escape after noticing that a guard had forgotten to lock his cell door one night.
Abdi ran from his cell and scrambled over a wall as al-Shabab guards fired at him. The militants chased him in two. Mahad Birik moves to a new rental house every month. After receiving an intensive education in Wahhabi Islam, he was appointed as an imam, or Islamic teacher, at age 9.
In this Islamic stronghold, Mahad had an unlikely encounter with an American missionary in a Mogadishu tea house. Mahad instantly hated the man. Although the. Several Christians who were arrested earlier this year have recently seen a positive turn in their case. These Christians are currently in custody in Somaliland, a semi-autonomous area of Somalia. They were arrested earlier this year and were originally accused of spreading Christianity. Skip to content Sign up for your free magazine Subscribe No Thanks.
