Imagine that you were born into a faith expression and that when your father left your family, never to be heard from again, your mother raised you in a different tradition of faith. You grew up, studied to be a doctor, met another doctor in church and married him. Then, one of your male relatives got upset with you one day and accused you of adultery-which in the country you are living in means a member of the majority faith expression cohabitating with a member of a minority faith expression. Now imagine that you are prosecuted for this “transgression” by your country’s government and condemned to death by hanging-and you are eight months pregnant. Now to make things worse (as if you could) imagine your toddler being in prison with you because the government has stripped your husband of his parental rights-all due to his religion.

Welcome to Sudan*. This is exactly the insane situation that Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, her husband Daniel Wani and their twenty month old son Martin find themselves in presently in that country. What crime has Meriam committed? Apostasy. You see she was born into a family with a Muslim father, which in South Sudan makes her a Muslim for life-even though her mother was a Christian and raised her as one when her father left the family when Meriam was six years old. Since Meriam is now a practicing Christian and has married a Christian man she is guilty of leaving the faith of Islam which makes her guilty of a crime in her country since the adoption of their Criminal Act statute in 1991.

According to a brief from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom,  Sudan* has been stepping up the use of the 1991 Criminal Act statute to punish and prosecute apostasy within it’s borders over the past two years.

“Apostasy is the formal abandonment, or renunciation, of a religious faith. Under Article 126 of Sudan’s 1991 Criminal Act, apostasy from Islam is legally punishable by death. While this punishment has not been carried out in almost two decades, there have been a number of apostasy cases in the past two years. In the past, suspected converts were subjected to intense scrutiny, intimidation, and sometimes torture by government security personnel.”

That is right, dear reader, if someone leaves Islam they can be hunted down by the government and tortured or executed for leaving the religion. Good thing the Catholic church doesn’t do this or I would have a ton of dead or missing friends who fit the “Hatch, Match and Dispatch” brand of the religion! What makes all of this even more troubling is that if Meriam’s husband could secure his passport and his son he could escape to the U.S. since he and his son both have dual citizenship in Sudan and the U.S. Of course if they could spring his wife who is eight months pregnant with her second child, under any other administration she could apply for asylum as a member of a persecuted religious minority and probably win admission. Under Obummer however, let’s just say I doubt her application would be granted. After all isn’t he the one who invited the Muslim Brotherhood into the White House? Hmm, wonder how long it will take for John Kerry to respond to this situation with more #diplomacy? Hopefully something will happen to save this woman prior to the birth and weaning of her baby-which the government says they will wait for prior to executing Meriam. How family friendly of them-nope no #waronwomen here-move along.

*Thank you to a reader for clarifying that this is happening in Sudan, which is predominantly Muslim while South Sudan, also referenced in the MSM regarding this story, is a separate nation set up by Christians hoping to escape the Islamist rule in Sudan.