A Muslim husband in western Uganda was so upset about his wife keeping her conversion to Christianity secret for almost two years that he retaliated by denying her food and then leaving her to fend for herself in a national park filled with wild animals.
Morning Star News reports Sharifa Muhando, 27, of Kasese town, said her husband beat her and also kept her from eating any food for a week after learning that she had put her faith in Jesus Christ. She had kept her Christian faith hidden from her husband Musa Bwambale, and other relatives since July of 2021.
Muhando, the mother of a two-year-old boy, recounted her ordeal which she said began on the evening of May 10. She had been praying and reading from her Bible in her room, but then she fell asleep.
“Unfortunately, I left the door open,” Muhando told Morning Star News from her hospital bed. “My husband came back from his place of work and called me, and I didn’t respond because I was deep in sleep. He opened the door and found me with my Bible and a notebook on my chest. He shouted, ‘Allah Akbar {Allah is greater}!’
Her husband’s shouting jolted her awake.
“I was terrified after seeing him; he asked me what the matter was,” she said. “I answered him that this is a holy book. He got annoyed and beat me that night and told me that he was punishing me for leaving Islam and that he will automatically be rewarded in Jannah {paradise} by Allah.”
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He then kept his wife from eating any food. He also threatened to kill her if she told anyone.
Then on May 17, Bwambale loaded Muhando in a vehicle and took her to Queen Elizabeth National Park, and left her there, telling her about a dream he said he received from Allah.
“My husband said he had received a dream from Allah of taking me somewhere,” Muhando told Morning Star News. “He took me on his vehicle and dumped me inside Queen Elizabeth National Park to be eaten by wild animals.”
The national park is known for its abundant wildlife, according to Wikipedia, including predators like the giant forest hog, Nile crocodile, leopard, spotted hyena, chimpanzee, and lion.
Luckily for Muhando, the pastor of the church she had been secretly attending, happened to be driving on the main road bordering the park when he saw her. He called some other people to help him, and they took her to a medical clinic to receive treatment.
“Sharifa’s health was in a bad state,” the pastor told Morning Star, who withheld his name for security reasons. “And she has been undergoing treatment while suffering from injuries. Her spleen especially was affected, as her husband hit her with a blunt object, and she has pain around the neck. The doctors are also treating her for starvation and trauma-related symptoms.”
As the pastor was preparing to call the police and report the incident, he learned Bwambale had died in a traffic accident.
“At the moment Sharifa needs prayers for quick healing and recovery from trauma and for her future life,” he said.
As CBN News has reported, Muhando’s story is just the latest incident of persecution against Christians in Uganda. Back in November, Muslim extremists burned down a house in eastern Uganda after a fellowship group of almost two dozen people had met to worship.
Earlier that same month, two brothers were severely beaten with sticks by members of their own family for converting from Islam to Christianity in October.
According to the U.S. State Department’s 2022 report on International Religious Freedom, the Ugandan constitution prohibits religious discrimination and stipulates there shall be no state religion. It provides for freedom of belief, the right to practice and promote any religion, and the right to belong to and participate in the practices of any religious organization in a manner consistent with the Constitution. The government requires religious groups to register.
According to the most recent census, conducted in 2014, 82 percent of the country’s population is Christian, the report said.
However, radical Islam’s influence has grown steadily, and many Christians within the majority-Muslim border regions are facing severe persecution, especially those who convert from Islam, according to The Voice of the Martyrs. This has led the ministry to rate the climate for Christians in the East African country as “hostile.”
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