Bantu woman shot after wife of militant confirmed she had Bibles.
NAIROBI, Kenya, October 1 (CDN) -
Islamic militants in Somalia this week killed a woman who led an underground Christian movement in the war-torn country.
Sources told Compass that a leader of Islamic extremist al Shabaab militia
in Lower Juba identified only as Sheikh Arbow shot to death 46-year-old
Mariam Muhina Hussein at 2 p.m. on Monday (Sept. 28) in Marerey village
after discovering she had six Bibles. Marerey is eight kilometers (five
miles) from Jilib, part of the neighboring Middle Juba region.
Local sources said that on
Sunday (Sept. 27) Arbow sent his wife to the house of Hussein, a Somali
Bantu, to confirm the presence of the Bibles. Pretending to be
interested in Christianity, the militia leader's wife confirmed the
existence of the Bibles.
The sources said Hussein readily
agreed to discuss Christianity with Arbow's wife and read parts of the
Bible with her. When Arbow's wife requested one of the Bibles, however,
Hussein demurred.
"She told her that it might not be safe for
her, preferring instead that she could visit her regularly for
discussions," said one source. "She then left and promised to visit
again soon."
The next day, Arbow arrived at Hussein's house
with other men and, in a friendly manner, claimed that he wanted to
check something in the Bible. Knowing only that Arbow was a fellow
ethnic Somali Bantu and having met his wife the previous day, Hussein
innocently gave one to him, sources said.
"Immediately, Arbow
told her that their mission was to look for Christians who have defiled
the Islamic religion," a source said. "There and then she lacked words
to say. She was ordered to get the other Bibles out, and she did."
Upon receiving the Bibles, sources said, Arbow fired three bullets at Hussein, who died instantly.
The Bibles were published in Swahili; besides this East African lingua franca, Bantus in Lower Juba also speak Kiswahili.
Compass has confirmed the killing with various sources in Nairobi and Somalia who cannot be identified for security reasons.
Hussein's
death comes a few weeks after the rebel militants killed another one of
the leaders of Somalia's Christian movement for distributing Bibles. Al shabaab militants
shot 69-year-old Omar Khalafe on Sept. 15 at a checkpoint they
controlled 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Merca, a Christian source told
Compass.
Al Shabaab, said to have links with al
Qaeda terrorists, controls much of southern parts of Somalia, as well
as other areas of the nation. Besides striving to topple President
Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed's Transitional Federal Government in
Mogadishu, the militants also seek to impose sharia (Islamic law).
In August al Shabaab extremists
seeking evidence that a Somali man had converted from Islam to
Christianity shot him dead near the Somali border with Kenya, sources
said. The rebels killed 41-year-old Ahmed Matan in Bulahawa, Somalia on
Aug. 18.
In Mahadday Weyne, 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, al Shabaab Islamists
on July 20 shot to death another convert from Islam, Mohammed Sheikh
Abdiraman, at 7 a.m., eyewitnesses told Compass. The militants also
reportedly beheaded seven Christians on July 10. Reuters reported that
they were killed in Baidoa for being Christians and "spies."
On Feb. 21 al shabaab militants
beheaded two young boys in Somalia because their Christian father
refused to divulge information about a church leader, according to Musa
Mohammed Yusuf, the 55-year-old father who was living in a Kenya
refugee camp when he spoke with Compass.
END
