Two Muslim girls who put their faith in Christ on 1 February were beaten and locked in a room without food for nearly three days.
Kakongoka Ahamadah had taken custody of Nabagabana Fatuma (14) and her sister Namwase Aisha (16) after the death of their father five years ago. The girls’ father had retained custody after divorcing their mother two years before he died. Their home is in Nasenye village, Pallisa District in eastern Uganda.
Aisha and her sister had been attending classes at an Islamic school where they had been taught about jinn (demons), which they said were oppressing them.
‘We were always troubled by the Islamic jinn, and on many occasions we missed sleep during the night, and we then decided secretly to attend the Christian prayer meeting to seek to be set free’, Aisha said.
Burden rolled away
They went to a worship gathering at a church in the area. ‘Before leaving the church, we told the pastor of our problems, who first prayed for us to be followers of Jesus and later prayed that the evil spirits will not torment us again’, Aisha said. ‘After the prayers, we felt as if a big burden had been rolled away.’
Full of joy, the two girls arrived home and told their uncle what Jesus had done for them. The subsequent beating by Ahamadah left Aisha with a swollen cheek and an injury to her left leg, while Fatuma’s right arm was injured. They were locked in a room in the house.
Ahamadah had reportedly arranged for the children to be taken to a Uganda branch of the Dawat-e-Islami, a global movement propagating the Qur’an and Islamic teaching, in the Sekulo area on 3 February. While he was away buying food in a nearby town, however, a friend of his arrived at the house. The children were crying, and the uncle’s friend decided to break the padlock.
The girls feared telling the friend, also a Muslim, what had happened. ‘We told him that we had gone out without the permission of our uncle, who had then decided to lock us inside the house’, Aisha said.
Traumatised
The visitor told them he was going to town and would return soon with their uncle. ‘As he left, we then decided to flee to the church’, Aisha said. A church leader initially took them to his home, but then to a hiding place. ‘The children looked pale, confused and traumatised’, he said.
The population of Uganda is less than 12% Muslim, according to Operation World. Catholics are the largest Christian denomination at 39% of the population of 28.6 million, followed by Anglicans at 36%; Protestants are less than 7% of the total population, and ‘independent’ churches make up about 3%.
