Christian in Sudan sentenced to death for her faith

[Highlord Laan]

Hopefully, she won't be let go only to be killed later by vigilantes...

Calling the half-literate, bloodthirsty barbarian fucks vigilantes is an insult to actual vigilantes. I hope she and her family straight out escape the country to a place that's actually civilized.

[slebetman]

Newspapers here report that she's been taken to a secret hideout (unclear if it was her/her husband's family or the government who's hiding her). Here's hoping that she manages to get out of the country soon.

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/20 ... ing-faith/

[AniThyng]

Newspapers here report that she's been taken to a secret hideout (unclear if it was her/her husband's family or the government who's hiding her). Here's hoping that she manages to get out of the country soon.

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/20 ... ing-faith/

It does pain me to say this as a fellow Malaysian, but clearly one of those countries she's better of avoiding is our own, given recent developments. Sure, no one has literally been sentenced to death yet, and there's still a long way to backslide, but hey.

[Broomstick]

Looks like the family tried to do the smart thing and leave the country but were stopped:

A Sudanese Christian woman who'd been sentenced to die for refusing to renounce her faith -- and then released -- was rearrested Tuesday at an airport as she was trying to leave the African country, her legal team told CNN on Tuesday.

Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, 27, her American husband, Daniel Wani, and their two children were stopped at an airport in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, and then detained and interrogated at Khartoum's national security headquarters, the legal team said.

Details about why the family was held weren't immediately available.

Wani, in a phone call to CNN, also said that he and his family were being held at the national security office, but did not provide details.

The developments come a day after Ibrahim's legal team announced she'd been released from prison after weeks of international controversy over her conviction on apostasy and adultery charges.

They also come as a man claiming to be Ibrahim's brother spoke of seeking retribution, claiming that Christians had tarnished his Islamic family's honor through the case.

The case began when one of Ibrahim's relatives, a Muslim, filed a criminal complaint saying her family was shocked to find out Ibrahim had married Wani, a Christian, after she was missing for several years, according to her lawyer.

The court considered Ibrahim a Muslim because her father was Muslim, but she proclaimed to be a Christian. So she was charged with adultery, because a Muslim woman's marriage to a Christian man is illegal in Sudan, and with apostasy, accused of illegally renouncing her original faith.

Authorities warned her to renounce Christianity by May 15, but she did not. She was convicted and sentenced last month to suffer 100 lashes and then be hanged.

Ibrahim said her mother, an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian, raised her as a Christian, with Ibrahim's Sudanese Muslim father abandoning her when she was 6.

"I am a Christian," she said during her sentencing hearing last month, "and I will remain a Christian."'

After her sentence drew international condemnation from rights groups and foreign embassies in Khartoum -- including those of the United States, United Kingdom and Canada -- an appeals court this month ruled that the judgment against her was faulty, and she was released, according to her lawyer.

She gave birth to her second child -- a girl -- in prison last month. Her first child, a 1-year-old son, stayed with her at the prison but was free to leave at any time, according to her lawyer.

On Tuesday, a man who says he is Ibrahim's brother, Al-Samani Al-Hadi, slammed the appellate court's decision and talked of vengeance.

"The family is unconvinced by the court's decision. We were not informed by the court that she was to be released; this came as a surprise to us," said Al-Hadi. "The law has failed to uphold our rights.
"This is now an issue of honor. The Christians have tarnished our honor, and we will know how to avenge it."
In court, Ibrahim denied being related to Al-Hadi.

Al-Hadi did not comment on Ibrahim's detention Tuesday.

Sudanese Parliament speaker Fatih Izz Al-Deen defended the conviction last month, insisting that claims that Ibrahim was raised as non-Muslim are untrue. She was raised in an Islamic environment, Al-Deen said.
Woman's 'brother' says she should repent

Fuck this sort of "honor".

I sort of wonder if the government let her go hoping someone or other would do the execution for them.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

I sort of wonder if the government let her go hoping someone or other would do the execution for them.

Why? They could simply execute her themselves, while with your theory they'd be both fundamentalist and incompetent.

I'd rather say they did this to avoid the bad press. I mean, they are African Muslims, they know that some people already have a pretty low opinion of them on both counts. Like Highlord Laan, for example.

[Phillip Hone]

My observation is rather that sharia law as practiced in modern Islamic nations has fallen away from the abstract ideal of justice. The ruling made by the Sudanese court is clearly unjust, even if one were so barbaric as to accept the premise that apostasy* (what she's charged with) is in theory punishable by death.

It is my (perhaps rosy-tinted) impression that adhering to the ideal of justice was more important in the Islamic golden age.

I was reflecting on this idea, that modern Islamic fundamentalism and its version of sharia law is more deeply flawed than we might think. It is not only an abomination by the standards of the secular, hyper-civilized West, but also by the standards of many religious ethicists throughout history.

My knowledge of this area is limited, but I don't see any reason to suppose that medieval Islam would have been tolerant of apostasy. Ibn Khaldun, an influential fourteenth century intellectual who ended his career working for the Mamluks in Egpyt, for instance, maintained in his magnum opus Introduction to History that growing the faith was a central mission for Islam. I doubt judges would have seen the law as being contradictory to an "ideal of justice," since maintaining the community was a key part of growing the faith. Dhimmi laws in general protected Christians and Jews but also relegated them to the status of second class citizens, limiting the size of their houses and forbidding them to ride horses, for instance. Medieval Islam was somewhat more tolerant than medieval Christianity, but by no means permitted an environment where people could freely choose their faith without pressure or consequences.

In Muslim Spain, for instance, Muslim men could marry Christian women, but Muslim women could not marry Christian men. Girls of mixed marriages could be raised as Christians or Muslim; boys could only be raised as Muslims.

I shouldn't state this too strongly as I'm no expert, but the fourteenth century Spanish Christian laws I've read for towns with mixed populations actually weren't all that different - protected from forced conversion, relegated to second class status. Welcome to convert to Christianity, but condemned to death if you went back on it.

[Broomstick]

I sort of wonder if the government let her go hoping someone or other would do the execution for them.

Why? They could simply execute her themselves, while with your theory they'd be both fundamentalist and incompetent.

Plausible deniability - they let her go and gain points on the international stage, but she still winds up dead which keeps the home grown fanatics happy.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

I sort of wonder if the government let her go hoping someone or other would do the execution for them.

Why? They could simply execute her themselves, while with your theory they'd be both fundamentalist and incompetent.

Plausible deniability - they let her go and gain points on the international stage, but she still winds up dead which keeps the home grown fanatics happy.

The media would catch on to that if it happened, so their international points would be gone and they would be seen as idiots. I'm not saying it cannot happen, just that it wouldn't be intended.

Of course none of us was there when Sudan decided that, so I can always be wrong.

[Lagmonster]

I hope she gets out. These 'honour' killers don't historically tend to give a shit if they get caught and punished by the government, so any minute she and her kids remain in the country is time her life could be at risk no matter what the government decides.

[Broomstick]

Her husband is also under considerable threat, for being a Christian man daring to marry a "Muslim" woman.

[slebetman]

It does pain me to say this as a fellow Malaysian, but clearly one of those countries she's better of avoiding is our own, given recent developments. Sure, no one has literally been sentenced to death yet, and there's still a long way to backslide, but hey.

It depends on the state really (since the constitution gives the states power over Islam/Muslims). In Selangor you can request formal apostasy forms from JAIS and they're required to process them. Which is how Selangor maintains a database of apostasy statistics. Of course they require you to go through "interviews" and "counseling" before approving the status change (which you can then take to the registration department to change your IC). And of course they're going to make the experience as humiliating and awkward as possible but it's possible (this is JAIS after all). This is not the case in other states like Perak and Perlis where it's technically impossible to convert out of Islam.

Apostasy is in fact a valid last resort defense tactic of followers of "deviant" sects. I recall it being done once by one of those funny polygamous sects where some of its members declare themselves non-muslims in syariah court so that the court would no longer have jurisdiction over them.

[AniThyng]

It does pain me to say this as a fellow Malaysian, but clearly one of those countries she's better of avoiding is our own, given recent developments. Sure, no one has literally been sentenced to death yet, and there's still a long way to backslide, but hey.

It depends on the state really (since the constitution gives the states power over Islam/Muslims). In Selangor you can request formal apostasy forms from JAIS and they're required to process them. Which is how Selangor maintains a database of apostasy statistics. Of course they require you to go through "interviews" and "counseling" before approving the status change (which you can then take to the registration department to change your IC). And of course they're going to make the experience as humiliating and awkward as possible but it's possible (this is JAIS after all). This is not the case in other states like Perak and Perlis where it's technically impossible to convert out of Islam.

Apostasy is in fact a valid last resort defense tactic of followers of "deviant" sects. I recall it being done once by one of those funny polygamous sects where some of its members declare themselves non-muslims in syariah court so that the court would no longer have jurisdiction over them.

Frankly it is greatly annoying to me that religious issues of all kinds are having a measurable impact on the politics of the state and the country (I'm a voter in Selangor and am quite aware that the MB is in a no-win situation at the moment since no matter what decision he makes someone will use it to bring him down - it just pisses me off that a the situations even exist in the first place. The water debacle was bad enough). Now you are entitled to disagree, and naturally I am aware it *is* in the constitution/laws, and am aware that I alone cannot change anything, but I do strongly feel that there is a incredible amount of hypocrisy around conversion and special rights, especially from people who have presumably spent time overseas and understand what it feels like to be the religious minority <there>, but then come back home and feel affronted that religious minorities <here> also ask for rights, nevermind the double standard around allowing people to convert in but stopping short of executing people who convert out. Yes there are forms and standards and people can't just adopt Islam without going through a battery of tests and courses, but people should have the right to choose in the end without being villified by everyone from the PM on down.