A 38-year-old mother of three in eastern Uganda had secretly put her faith in Christ for three months before her Muslim husband found two Bibles in her suitcase.
On that day, Nov. 21, in Bugiri District’s Matovu village, Zubeda Nabirye’s husband asked her why she had the two Bibles, one in English and the other in their tribal language. Her husband, Umar Kyakulaga, also asked if she had converted to Christianity, she said.
“I replied to him that a friend had given me the Bibles, and that I was using it to compare it with what is written in the Koran, and after all religion is a matter of personal choice,” Nabirye told a Morning Star News contact. She also told her husband, “I was convicted and decided to embrace Christianity.”
Kyakulaga grew angry and picked up a copy of the Koran, she said.
“My husband began reading verses in the Koran that allowed men to beat their wives if they disobey them, and after that he started beating me with slaps and sticks,” she said. “As if this was not enough, he forced me to take Dithane M-45,” a toxic pesticide.
She tried not to swallow the pesticide he had forced into her mouth but ingested some while he was trying to strangle her and hitting her leg with sticks, she said. He also injured her chest, neck and thigh, Nabirye said.
When the couple moved to Matovu from Kaliro district earlier this year, they had left their three children with Nabirye’s mother-in-law due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus no one else was home when Nabirye lost consciousness. Read more …