Although it was reported that Mariam’s execution was revoked, the situation remains unclear, so please continue to keep Mariam and her family in your prayers. An appeal from Aid to the Church in Need:
| Dear Friends,
Mariam has recently given birth to her beautiful daughter in a dark gloomy prison in Sudan. While chained to the wall, she cradles her baby and nurses her, while caring also for her young son. Her crime? She is Christian.
Mariam Yehya Ibrahim was arrested in September 2013, charged with apostasy for having left Islam, a religion she has never recognized. She was sentenced to death by hanging. She has also been charged with adultery for marrying a Christian and is to receive 100 lashes once her baby has been weaned. The judge gave Mariam a few days to renounce her Christian faith and practice Islam, but Mariam has chosen to remain faithful to her religion, telling the judge “I am a Christian and I never committed apostasy.” She also told her husband that she would rather die than change her faith. As a Catholic and as a person of faith, can we count on your prayers? Mariam is the human face of Aid to the Church in Need – an individual being persecuted solely for her belief in God. Please get the word out about this tragedy that is unfolding in Sudan. If you’d like to join our vigil for Mariam and the two innocent children imprisoned alongside her, please visit us here.  May God bless you for your concern and may God keep Mariam safe from harm.
 |
Read here for further information.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
“She also told her husband that she would rather die than change her faith.”
If true, she will be privileged to die a martyr’s death. Of course, I hope it doesn’t come to that. What I can’t fathom is the tepid (basically non-existent) support this woman is receiving from the U.S. State Department, even though she’s married to a U.S. citizen, has two children who are U.S. citizens and who’d be a U.S. citizen herself, guaranteed, if the immigration authorities there moved at more than a glacial pace. All that President Barack Hussein Obama need do is place a one minute call to Lori Scialabba, acting director of USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) and Mariam would be rubber stamped through in two minutes flat. Will the President, who may be an apostate from Islam himself – his childhood really is a bit murky – place that call? He’d rather be golfing, and more to the point, citizenship for Mariam would mean that the U.S. government would actually have to do something to help her escape this awful predicament.
As the above ACN letter ends: may God keep Mariam safe from harm, because her adopted country sure won’t. I used to be a huge admirer of the American Dream, and I still have a great deal of affection for all the Americans I personally know, but that nation has truly lost its way.
Please forgive me: this is not a politics blog, and I shall mind my Ps and Qs henceforth.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Ponder Anew.
LikeLike
Nothing to apologise for JH ! You hit the nail on the head by voicing these thoughts that perhaps many share. We should all be pressurising President Obama to get the wheels in motion to put an end to this poor young woman’s terrible predicament. It is really scandalous that such injustice and evil by these followers of Islam is tolerated by those who could intervene to put an end to her ordeal.
Is Obama a Christian though? Many doubt it… and if not, that would explain a lot of his inaction in this case. Take a look at this shocking article where Obama gives a LGBT speech and “openly mocks the God of the Bible”:
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=22785
LikeLike
I agree with both of you that Mr Obama doesn’t seem to share any ‘Catholic’ priorities (except insofar as they tend toward leading prospective voters into fealty to his political party), so him bothering himself with Immigration over this poor lady isn’t much of a likelihood. (There is the Marine sergeant, Tahmooressi, in a Mexican jail over a simple border infraction; he’s liable to be there for who knows how long. Mr Obama has other priorities.) On the other hand, he may have really very little leverage in Khartoum. I don’t know.
And I always feel like I can entrust my small monthly alms to ACN without having to be concerned that someone is getting provided abortion counselling or worse.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Sudan Hub Group: Bridging the Gap.
LikeLike
Yes Marc, with so much uncertainty nowadays as to how one’s funds to charities are going to be channelled (syphoned off?), many people are rather wary about donating to these worthy causes. They want to help, but don’t want to line the pocket of some greedy administrator… or worse!
With ACN one can be assured that 99% of one’s donation goes straight to its needy destination.
LikeLike
More news reports today to the effect that a court has ordered Mrs Ibrahim released: we’ll have to wait to see if the media have any truth, this time. Spes contra spem.
LikeLike
Yes Marc, I also heard this joyful news on the radio this afternoon, and just now again on the TV… I think it must be true, Deo gratias! 🙂 Truly this is an answer to the prayers and supplication of many good people fighting and praying for Mariam’s release all these past weeks.
It still remains a subject that should not be filed away – how islamic law in many Muslim countries condemns a person to death for apostasy, i.e. converting to another religion!! (Not Mariam’s case; she was never a Muslim.) Do most Muslims agree with this rule? Seeing the Muslims going about their daily lives around here, like everyone else, it is hard to believe.To me such a law sounds just plain cruel, terrifying and evil.
LikeLike
The Muslims I’ve known have been the sort who take the more cruel aspects of the Koran in what we Catholics might call ‘a spiritual sense’, so far as I could tell, thinking of texts such as those that support stonings and hand-cuttings and so forth as more ‘figurative’ than ‘literal’, ‘Old Testament’ life versus modern life. Quite how they do this, since there doesn’t seem to be any sort of ‘magisterium’, I don’t know. They are decent and honest people, academics and tech people. So far as Islam itself goes, I personally continue to think of it as an historical aberration, as it were, a mix of folklore, Jewish and Christian heresy etc– since it is obviously not derived directly from divine Revelation. But today is a day for rejoicing with Mrs Ibrahim and her husband and baby! 🙂
LikeLike
Marc, everything you say in your last post reflects my own experience with individual Muslims, (which is not to say that Islam is nothing to worry about) and believe it or not, some of them actually have a sense of humour, despite the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s famous assertion that there are “no jokes in Islam”. One of my best friends at uni was a Pakistani Muslim named “Kapi”. About 30 years after we graduated, I saw him at a reunion and shouted out with delight “PAKI !” He was able to laugh at my innocent dyslexia.
LikeLike
So much has changed, johnhenrycn, in thirty years, hasn’t it, but some things haven’t– friendship and joy among them. And unfortunately the last time I looked Mrs Ibrahim and family had been arrested while attempting to leave Sudan– terrible news, eh. Stat crux dum volvitur orbis, the Carthusian tag goes; the Cross abides while the world changes..
LikeLike
Thanks for the translation. Always the sign of a gentleman to give one.
LikeLike