Kenya – From Interview with Rev. Francis Omondi 

 

Barnabas Fund October

 

Kenya has 80% Christians and about 20% Muslim. The 80% have not been very active – many are nominal Christians.

 

Relationships between Christians and Muslims had not been that bad, but many who had peaceful relations with others are now being considered as not true Muslims. So, they have been building hostility towards the other, non-Islamic, communities.

 

When al-Shabaab started operating, Muslims felt that their issues were now articulated. It was not violent at first but seen as a saviour championing the needs of Muslims. Now that it has turned out violent, many Muslims have begun to wonder, “Is this all there is in Islam?”

 

We thought Nairobi would be the safest, but al-Shabaab have attacked there to gain international publicity.

 

There were several major attacks including Garissa University in April 2015, Mandera where they killed 37 mainly Christians quarry workers and, in the previous November, 28 teachers on a bus, letting the Muslims go.

 

During the Garissa University attack, one of the militias was saying, “When your government learns not to invade our land, we will stop killing you.”

Uganda – Father Drives Son from Home for Becoming Christian

Morning Star News October 10, 2017 

The young man did not answer after his father asked him if he had ditched Islam to become a Christian.

Magale Hamidu, 20, of Nanoko in eastern Uganda, had become a Christian seven months before. He had been failing to attend mosque prayers, and his father had learned that twice a Christian pastor had visited him at their home.

As Hamidu kept quiet, his father began beating him with a stick, sources told Morning Star News. They said other family members picked up sticks and joined in.

Hamidu’s screams on that day, Sept. 20, alerted neighbours who managed to pull the bleeding young man away. He was rushed to a community clinic in Kibuku District, where he was treated for injuries to his head and right hand and discharged, they said.

A neighbour told Morning Star News that Hamidu’s father, Kasani Mubali, said he wants to kill his son.

France: Imam chants verse encouraging attacks on Christians

Barnabas Fund 5^th October 2017

In France, an imam leading Friday prayers for several hundred Muslims on the street in front of a town hall at Clichy, in Paris, chanted the words from the Quran (9:36) urging jihad against non-Muslims:

“Fight the infidels without exception, as they fight you without exception, and know that Allah is with the pious.”

The Grand Mosque of Paris, built in 1926

In fact, this comes only a few verses after Q9:29,which speaks of waging jihad against Christians until they pay the jizya tax. The significance of this tax on non-Muslims was that it was a sign of subjugation, humiliation and second-class status within an Islamic state, lacking many of the rights of Muslim citizens.