A woman was divorced by her Muslim hus-band after he discovered she owned a Bible, it was reported in August.
The husband of the 32-year-old mother of two children discovered that his wife was a Christian and owned a Bible. He demanded that she reveal who had given it to her.
‘I told my husband that I found the Bible in Nairobi and wanted to read it,’ the unidentified wife said.
‘[Then] he just pronounced the word talaq [divorce] to me. I knew that our marriage had just been rendered null and void because I joined Christianity, so without wasting time I left the homestead.’
This happened in Somaliland, a self-declared state widely considered to be an autonomous region of Somalia, a month after the couple returned from a trip to Kenya to obtain medical treatment for her father.
After taking her father first to Nairobi Hospital and then to Kijabe Mission Hospital, the woman had found a Somali-Bible and requested a copy to read later in private. She had secretly converted from Islam in 2016. She had never owned a Bible.
Having returned home, the mother of two girls, aged seven and four, had forgotten to lock the drawer where she hid the Scriptures. Her husband subsequently took her two daughters away.
She said: ‘He gave me a stern warning that I should not come close to the children, and that if I do, he will take the Bible to the Islamic court and I will be killed by stoning for becoming an apostate.’
