Hiire Sadiki after he was poisoned in Nawanjofu village, Butaleja District, Uganda on April 2, 2022. (Morning Star News)
Hiire Sadiki, a 56-year-old Sheikh of Masjid Uthman located in Nawanjofu, a municipality in Bunyole county in Butaleja district in the eastern region in Uganda, has been poisoned because he renounced his Muslim faith to become a Born-again Christian.
This tragic incident occurred on April 2, 2022, after his wife learnt of his new found faith in Christ.
According to a report by US-based persecution watchdog Morning Star News (MSN), Sadiki put his faith in Christ on March 27 after hearing the Gospel for several months during meetings with an area Pastor.
It is then that he declined to observe several Islamic rituals including Ramadan, something his wife noticed soon enough.
He said, “She realized that I had converted to Christianity. She questioned me because of the mode of my praying. I told her that I had believed in Issa [Jesus].”
Under sharia law, the conversion of a Muslim to another religion is considered apostasy, which the group interprets as a crime punishable by death. Sadiki’s wife studied the Koran at Bugembe Islamic Institute.
After learning about her husband’s conversion, she left the house and began phoning Muslim leaders. She then returned and started preparing supper.
“After 30 minutes, a lady who is a neighbor arrived and went to the kitchen, and after a short while, she left,” Sadiki said.
Sadiki suffered convulsions and vomiting after eating, according to MSN. His wife and three children, however, were not affected by the same food.
Thankfully, he still had strength to call his Pastor, who took him to a hospital immediately. Sadiki was diagnosed with food poisoning, and doctors began treating him for ptomaine poisoning.
The pastor, who preferred anonymity, said. “Sadiki did not respond to medications as his conditions grew worse.” “He started having diarrhea with blood, nausea, vomiting and severe abdominal pain,” he said.
Further tests indicated his food was tainted with a toxic substance related to organophosphate insecticides used to kill rats, he said.
“He had lost some amount of blood,” the pastor said. “I then rang his wife. As I began asking about the sheikh and introducing myself, she was so annoyed and started abusing me for converting her husband. She said she did not want to be identified with him because he had become an infidel, and that she was leaving him and going back to her people, that her husband deserved death for forsaking Islam, and that she didn’t want to relate with an infidel.”
She then hung up the phone, the pastor said.
The pastor also phoned Sadiki’s sister-in-law, who told him she was also very bitter, that the family had incurred a great loss from the sheikh leaving Islam and leadership of the mosque, and that they wanted nothing to do with him.
“I have given a caution to nurses and doctors not to allow any person to see the patient without his consent, because I felt that they might come and further harm him,” the pastor said.
Sadiki’s wife has left with their three children, ages 16, 10 and 6, he told MSN.
