In different states, two Muslims make decisions that turn their worlds against them.
JOS, Nigeria – Idris Aliyu received Christ’s salvation in March after reading the Gospel of Luke’s account of the resurrection. Mohammed Sarajo became a Christian after miraculous healing saved him from death. The disparate paths of the two former Muslims in Nigeria, however, have put them on the same road – fleeing from those who want to kill them.
Aliyu, 24, is from Kominjak village near Namu town in Plateau state. “If they kill me, they are the losers, while my gain is eternal life,” he says of the uncle and other Muslims in the neighborhood who threatened to kill him earlier this year.
Growing up in an Islamic educational system, he had attended Quranic school. At the time of his converson, Aliyu was living in Jos with his uncle, Abdullahi Danbaba, after leaving his father’s cattle business last year to work with a transport company; he then had found himself jobless when the firm’s sole truck broke down.
His uncle and other neighborhood Muslims warned him to either recant or be prepared to die as an infidel.
“I could not take their threats lightly, as I know of a Muslim in the city of Katsina who was killed sometime ago when he became a Christian,” Aliyu said. “I decided that instead of renouncing Jesus, it was better I escape from home.”
Nor did Aliyu find sympathy from his parents when he fled back to Kominjak village; he said of the persecution there only that it was “intense.” His fugitive life took him to Lafia in Nasarawa state, and then to Akwanga town. There he found refuge with the Evangelical Reformed Church of Christ (ERCC) and the Rev. Dio Adamu.
