Our good friends
and allies at the Center for Security Policy (CSP) issued a statement
yesterday highlighting the imprisonment of a Sudanese woman and her
20-month old American citizen child. The woman was arrested and sentenced
to death because her American husband helped her convert to Christianity.
CSP's statement is copied in full below.
WASHINGTON, DC The Center for Security
Policy strongly urges the Department of State to demand that the government
of Sudan immediately release Meriam Ibrahim, a 27-year old Sudanese
Christian woman married to a naturalized American citizen and their
20-month old American citizen child from prison, where she and the toddler
are being held after she was sentenced to flogging and death on charges of
“apostasy” and “adultery” under Sudan’s Islamic legal code.
Ibrahim is the daughter of a Sudanese Muslim father and an Ethiopian
Christian mother who was raised by her mother as an Ethiopian Orthodox
Christian from the age of 6, when her father abandoned the family. She is a
graduate of the School of Medicine in Khartoum and married her naturalized
American citizen husband, Daniel Wani, in 2011. Their toddler child, Martin,
is an American citizen, but is being held in jail together with his mother,
who is pregnant with the couple’s second child. Ibrahim’s husband is
accused of proselytizing Ibrahim to abandon Islam and she herself was
arrested on 17 February 2014 for alleged “apostasy” and “adultery,” as
under shariah her marriage to a Christian is considered null and void.
Despite severe psychological pressure to recant her Christian faith,
Ibrahim remains steadfast in refusing to do so, even under threat of a
death sentence (the prescribed penalty for ‘forsaking Islam’ under Sudan’s
Penal Code, which conforms to Islamic Law). Today, 15 May 2014, Judge Abbas
Mohammed Al-Khalifa pronounced her sentence: to be lashed 100 times for
adultery and then hanged.
The Center for Security Policy finds such penalties for the so-called hadd
offenses under shariah abhorrent and in violation of all civilized concepts
of human rights. That American citizens are being subjected to such
treatment requires an urgent response from Secretary of State John Kerry.
We therefore urge Secretary Kerry to demand the immediate release of Meriam
and Martin and then expedite them and Ibrahim’s naturalized American
citizen husband Daniel to safety and the protection of their religious
freedom, in the U.S.
Unfortunately, authorities in Islamic countries continue to suppress the
rights of Christians and women. This and countless other examples
demonstrate the real threat that sharia law poses to freedom.
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