Seven-year-old Christian in Somalia was beaten up for his faith
A Christian in Somalia, who has been continuously persecuted for his faith saw his children attacked for the first time this month. An assault on his seven-year-old son sent him to hospital for three days.
The convert from Islam had finished a Bible study with other underground Christians on the 9th of October in Dhobley, in Somalia’s Lower Juba administrative region, when Muslims from the area sent boys about thirteen years old to assault his son as he returned from a shop in the early evening.
“My son was attacked by three boys who beat him and injured his private parts,” the father, whose name is withheld for security purposes, told Morning Star News by phone. “He suffered a swollen and injured face as well as an injured left hand from a knife. My son lost a lot of blood and was rushed by one of the secret believers to a nearby dispensary in Dhobley.”
He said his son is still suffering the effects of the attack and needs specialised medication that he hopes can be obtained in Kenya; Dhobley is about fifty kilometres from Somalia’s border with Kenya.
“It is not possible to get justice in this part of Somalia where almost everyone is a Muslim,” he said. “We are being hunted down like wild animals because of putting our faith in Jesus. Always our security is at stake. We need prayers and financial support for the treatment of my son.”
The father of five children, the oldest seven and the youngest four months old, said Muslims began targeting him soon after he left Islam eight years ago. After arriving in Kenya in 2012 from another country undisclosed for security reasons, he met a German missionary couple in Wajir who shared the Gospel with him. Two months later, he said, he decided to follow Christ.
“Soon Muslims discovered my new faith in Christ due to my frequent visit to the home of the missionary couple,” he said.
He fled to Dadaab refugee camp near Kenya’s border with Somalia, where he married a Somali refugee. They rented a house in Liboi on the Kenyan side of the border, and soon he began holding small fellowship meetings. When his wife put her faith in Christ in 2013, her father, who had opposed their marriage, soon learned about her conversion and showed up in Liboi from his quarters in the Dadaab complex’s Ifo refugee camp.
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