A Christian mother from Sudan who had been tortured for her faith, had deep cause for fear in the Autumn when her Muslim brother went to her church in Cairo, Egypt with a photo of her husband and asked members if they knew his whereabouts.
Muslim extremists from Sudan had kidnapped and tortured her less than two years earlier in Cairo, and they threatened to kill her husband and daughter if she refused to return to Islam.
The 42-year-old, Ebtehaj Alsanosi Altejani Mostafa, was tied to a chair in a darkened room when her abductors gave her that ultimatum.
She had fled to Egypt in 2005 after being jailed five times in Sudan for her faith. In Cairo she met a Sudanese pastor, also a convert from Islam, who would become her husband; he had also fled persecution in Sudan.
Attack
On her way to a market she was grabbed, her face covered and she was sprayed with a chemical that left her unconscious.
Taken to a windowless room, water was poured on her, she was tied to a chair and called kafira, an infidel. Verses from the Qur’an were recited to her that call for the killing of those who leave Islam. Between verses they shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’, the jihadist slogan ‘God is greater’.
The extremists then untied her, forced her to lie on the floor and ripped her clothes. In spite of her pleas to stop, they raped her in turns, she said. ‘This is lesson number one,’ one of the men told her.
Other men joined in the attacks and her back was burned with a cigarette 26 times. She was slapped and kicked as she wouldn’t say the shahada.
They attempted to force her to sign papers saying she had returned to Islam, and they hurt her hands as they forced her against her will to sign one of the papers. Then she felt a blow to the back of her head and lost consciousness. When she came to, she found herself on a street with people and cars passing by, she said.
Trusting God
Mostafa said she is trusting that God has his purposes for her abduction, and that her purpose in revealing it was that the international community would know what kinds of pressures Sudanese converts face in Egypt. ‘Our God is able, and I am now alive,’ she said.
