by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - One Christian woman in Uganda has died and another was hospitalized last month after apparent attacks by Muslim relatives enraged at their conversion to Christ, Morning Star News reports.
On September 18, 23-year-old Namata Habiiba accepted Christ after attending a church service in Bugiri District, eastern Uganda, MSN reports. Upon returning home, she told her Muslim stepmother Namu Sauya about her new faith. Soon after this, Sauya served food to Namata, who became violently ill and died in hospital. An autopsy revealed Namata had died from ingesting rat poison. Habiiba is survived by a 3-year-old child, whose father is a Muslim who planned to make her his second wife. Sauya disappeared after Habiba was taken ill, and a search is underway for her as a suspected murderer.
A week earlier, on September 10, 42-year-old secret Christian Falida Nazziwa was severely beaten by her Muslim husband in Kiboga District, central Uganda, after attending an all-night prayer vigil believing her spouse to be away on a trip, MSN reports. Falida’s husband Saidi Mudogo was waiting for her when she got home; he had returned early and unexpectedly from his trip. “In the morning as I went back home, I found my husband very furious on the compound, and he asked about where I slept,” Nazziwa told Morning Star News.
“I told him the truth that I had gone for an overnight prayer in the church,” Falida continued. “After hearing the words ‘overnight prayer,’ he just jumped on my neck shouting, ‘Prayers, not in my house,’ and started beating and strangling me while shouting, ‘Allah Akbar [God is greater]! Kafir, kafir [infidel]!’” Mudogo has disappeared, and a search is underway for him.
Christianity is legal in Uganda, but Christian converts from Islam are regularly violently attacked by their Muslim families.
“The attacks were the latest of many instances of persecution of Christians in Uganda that Morning Star News has documented,” MSN said in its report.