By Our Reporter and News Agencies
Around the globe, several people who renounce Islam to follow Jesus Christ often face persecution, imprisonment as well as torture.
In Kabula, a village located near Iganga in the eastern region of Uganda, a former Islamic teacher was brutally murdered by hitmen hired by his Muslim relatives recently.
ChristianHeadlines.com, a member of the Salem Web Network, reports that Saban Sajabi, 32, was an itinerant sheikh who taught Islam in several mosques and schools in eastern Uganda. However, after a visit to his Christian uncle Shadrach Hasakya in 2015, he decided to receive Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.
Saban’s decision to renounce Islam agitated his family members, prompting him to flee to Jinja, a town in southeastern Uganda – leaving his Muslim wife and child behind.
For five years, Saban received threats from his family members. The threats intensified when he married a Christian woman by the name of Sarah Birungi in 2016.
In a report published August 26, 2021, a source that spoke to US.-based persecution watchdog Morning Star News (MSN) on condition of anonymity said one of the latest text messages Sajabi received was from a relative that said, “If anything happens to you, be informed that we shall not help you, especially at this time of COVID-19. Our advice is for you to return to Islam, the religion of the family.”
Sajabi received a call from his relatives on July 14, 2021 saying that his Christian uncle Shadrach Hasakya whom he regularly visited during the holidays while growing up and had paid for his high school education, was seriously ill.
With his wife, Sajabi left his home in Jinja to visit Hasakya, leaving behind their two children aged 6 and 2 under the care of a helper.
As the Christian couple made their way to Kabula village, Birungi said that they continued to receive calls from Sajabi’s relative. They arrived at 8 in the evening and were warmly greeted by Boda drivers who offered to take them to Hasakya’s home. They tried contacting the relative they had been in touch with, but they could not be reached.
Sajabi and Birungi hired a Boda driver each and when they reached a swamp, Sajabi’s Boda driver said they ran out of fuel, but continued on for another 100 meters until they reached the house of one of Hasaka’s neighbors in Kabula. Once there, two motorcycles carrying three men each arrived, Birungi recounted to Morning Star News.
“They started beating my husband and then dragged him to a nearby anthill, dug into it and pushed his head inside, and he breathed his last,” Birungi said of how the unnamed men brutally murdered her Chrsitian husband.
She added that during the assault, one of the men covered her mouth and warned her not to call for help or else they would also kill her.
“What you have witnessed happening to your husband today is for the disobedience of your husband not heeding the advice given by the family that he should return to Islam, since Islam cannot tolerate infidels,” one of the unidentified assailants told Birungi. She later saw one of them cut her dead husband’s neck.
Upon her release, she ran to a house about 100 meters away and knocked on the door, telling them that her husband “had just been butchered.” Fearing for their own lives, the residents did not step out to help but raised an alarm, causing many people to arrive.
Sajabi’s lifeless body was taken to a mortuary the following day, while Birungi was hospitalized for depression and trauma for 18 days at a Jinja hospital. Birungi was released on 2nd August 2021, during which she learned that Sajabi’s Muslim relatives refused to give him a funeral and that Hasakya buried him instead.
