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Yemen: Woman burned to death by brother for converting to Christianity

Aug 29, 2014 8:36 am By Robert Spencer

Nazeera-receiving-hospital-treatment-after-fire-attack.-Morning-Star-News-via-SaeedMuhammad commanded: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-`ashriyyah, Al-Ja`fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.” There is only disagreement over whether the law applies only to men, or to women also – some authorities hold that apostate women should not be killed, but only imprisoned in their houses until death.

Yet in the West, Islamic apologists blandly assert that Islam has no death penalty for apostasy, and that’s that: human rights organizations and Western governments do nothing for these threatened people.

“Woman in Yemen Burned to Death for Her Faith,” Morning Star News, August 29, 2014:

ISTANBUL (Morning Star News) – On the morning of June 9 in southern Yemen, Saeed woke to the sound of screaming. He shot out of bed, pushed panicked family members aside and saw his wife stumbling out of their kitchen, engulfed in flames.

His wife, Nazeera, had been preparing breakfast at about 9 a.m. when she poured liquid from a cooking oil bottle into a hot pan. The liquid flashed, and the bottle exploded. While her four children watched, screaming, Nazeera was being burned alive.

“I rushed out of the room,” Saeed (full name undisclosed for security reasons) told Morning Star News, weeping. “I couldn’t even speak to ask her what happened. All I could think about was putting the fire out and then getting her to the hospital. But my 16-year-old son, he couldn’t stop himself and held on to her, hugging her while she was burning. He got hurt, and I had to pull him away from her.”

About two weeks later, Nazeera, 33, died as a result of her burns. When Saeed returned to his home in a village (undisclosed for security reasons) after her death, a relative told him the unthinkable – members of both his family and hers had taken the vegetable oil out of the bottle and replaced it with gasoline. Saeed knew the reason – many years ago, the two had become Christians and refused to return to Islam.

After living in hiding in Yemen for several months, Saeed was able to flee to the relative safety of another country, he told Morning Star News.

Before the attack, Saeed and his wife had already decided to flee their families and the 99 percent Muslim country on the Arabian Peninsula. They got their travel papers two days before the sabotaged bottle exploded.

Medical Care

After doctors said there was nothing more they could do for Nazeera, friends of the couple were able to secure a room in a hospital in Egypt for further treatment. Nazeera died that day, before they could go.

Saeed was with her when she died. Among her last words to him was not to worry and to take care of their children. Saeed left the hospital and took the two-hour trip back home. There a relative told him that one of his brothers and one of her brothers had conspired against them to punish them.

“I was told by one of our relatives that it was a set-up, and they replaced the cooking oil with petrol, which caught flames as soon as she poured it out,” he said.

When Saeed went to police for help, officers told him to bring witnesses who could testify about the alleged conspiracy to sabotage the cooking oil bottle. His children only saw the explosion and could not testify regarding sabotage, and Saeed’s relatives refused to incriminate the alleged conspirators, their own family members.

“No one will be a witness for us,” Saeed said. “And my family told me that if I was killed and cut into pieces, they wouldn’t do anything to help or be a witness on my side.”

Saeed buried his wife and tried to sell everything left in his home, but family members blocked his efforts. Initially his four children lived at his mother’s house after the attack, but he secretly took them to another country before relatives could take them from him.

His last image of home was his relatives descending on his house, he said.

“I lost the way to support myself and everything we had,” he said. “And when we were leaving, I was trying to sell things we had, but some of my family members stopped it so I wouldn’t get anything. Even the day I took the children to leave [the country], they attacked our house and divided our things among themselves. They destroyed the rest.”

A New Faith

Saeed, 45, was born into a Muslim family in a small village in south Yemen that he would not identify for security reasons.

As a high school Arabic teacher, Saeed read a lot of newspapers to incorporate current events into his classes. In 1997, he was reading an article about a member of the Yemeni Parliament doing something seen as a sin in Islam. Later he was struck by a columnist’s article about the incident urging forgiveness.

“A local journalist wrote an article saying, ‘Why don’t you forgive him like Essa [Jesus] said. If you forgive other people, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive other people, your Father will not forgive you,’” Saeed said. “I heard this verse and was amazed that God talks about forgiveness, and I wanted to know more about Him, but as you know, you can hardly find Bibles in Yemen. I waited, and in 2003, I heard one of my students talking about a Christian radio station that broadcasts for half an hour a day in the Yemeni dialect. That’s how I came to know about Jesus.”

Saeed married Nazeera in 1998. By 2003, when he began drifting from Islam to become a Christian, he had two sons and his wife was pregnant with their first daughter. All of them, including his wife, followed him in his newfound faith.

When people in his village started to notice a change in the way he acted, they started harassing him.

“I was also punished at work,” Saeed said. “In 2003, I was suspended for being a Christian from my work for a year, and then when I returned, instead of putting me back in my place as a secondary school teacher, I was demoted and placed in a primary school. Instead of working in a school about 100 meters away from my house, the new school where I taught was 5 kilometers [3 miles] away, which I had to walk to every day.”

At the primary school, things got worse. He was suspended once, he said, for refusing to donate 500 rials (US$2.40) that the school was collecting from every worker for Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic organization designated as a terrorist group by the United States and other nations.

In March he refused to give a donation at school to a charitable Islamic association affiliated with another terrorist group. A member of the charity accused Saeed of being an “infidel” and then encouraged another teacher to assault him. The teacher beat him in front of more than 1,000 students. Saeed did not fight back, he said.

Persecution from Nazeera’s family was no less severe. They essentially kidnapped her three times in three years in hopes of convincing her to leave “the infidel.”

“But she kept saying that she wanted to be with me, and that she believes in what I believe, and that no matter what, she won’t leave me and the children,” Saeed said.

At least one human rights group that advocates for persecuted Christians and a group of Christians assisting Saeed have confirmed the details of his ordeal. One religious freedom advocate said that while today’s headlines are full of stories about terrorist groups brutalizing Christian communities in the Middle East, the day-to-day life and death struggles of converts often go forgotten.

“Though clearly an extreme case of persecution, this incident illustrates the pressure converts are under,” said the advocate, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

The killing was “a huge tragedy,” he added. “That is not anything anyone should have to go though alone. It is the worst place to be.”

Defying common logic, Saeed said God allowed the atrocity to take place to “strengthen our faith and use us more in His Kingdom.”

“We ask people to pray for us, as we are all alone in this new place,” he said (Morning Star News has confirmed the country, undisclosed for security reasons). “Pray for my children, as now I am their mother and father and only friend. We need prayers for God’s strength and to give us strong faith. I want people outside to know that even if we get cut into pieces, we won’t leave Jesus Christ.”

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Filed Under: Apostasy, Muslim persecution of Christians, Yemen Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. epistemology says

    Aug 29, 2014 at 8:59 am

    I can only pray for this courageous man who has to replace his children’s mom and I hope he can find peace in a safe country. G’d bless him.

    Islam and human civilization are mutually exclusive. When will the apologists ever learn? Jussuf al-Qaradawi once said that if Islam didn’t have the death penalty for apostasy it would cease to exist. Very revealing, ain’t it?

    • EYESOPEN says

      Aug 30, 2014 at 7:50 am

      I’m with you there epistemology. I pray that Almighty God may give this man the courage, the wisdom, and the grace to continue in his faith; and to be able to be both father and mother to his children. I pray for the children also that they can get over the horror they witnessed and realize that their mother is with Jesus as a true martyr for her faith.

      • BC says

        Aug 31, 2014 at 7:01 am

        Would it not be better if ‘ Almighty god’ (I am always amused by that label) had thwarted the efforts of the murderers who had plotted the death of a have woman who had converted?
        It is like the Pope who was convinced that a saint had diverted the bullet from his vital organs when he was shot.

  2. Jay Boo says

    Aug 29, 2014 at 9:38 am

    Such evil always creeps
    into a Muslim’s prayer mat feast.
    Vanity cannot stand to have anything get in the way.
    Yet, Muslims still love to do Islam’s prayer display.
    But when their Islamic fix wears off they always come back into Islam’s vast emptiness.
    At this point, Muslims begin to grasp and become dangerous.

    Muslim decorum always descends into Islam’s disgrace.

    Always

  3. Jay Boo says

    Aug 29, 2014 at 9:46 am

    At this very moment another little girl is beaming with a sweet smile while trying on a hijab for the first time.

    A sweet smile

    The hijab makes her feel important.
    Islam is full of sad irony.

  4. Anonymous says

    Aug 29, 2014 at 10:03 am

    May God give Saeed all the strength he asks for to care for himself and his children and consolation in grief over the death of Nazeera who I hope will rest in eternal peace after what she has been through. Jesus Christ please protect them for they are in your hands.

    • SallyA says

      Aug 29, 2014 at 10:59 pm

      @ Anonymous – agreed. He is a brave man who loved his wife. He and their children and all the rest being persecuted by Muslim terrorists who are also their Muslim family members deserve a permanent place on our prayer list.

  5. Salah says

    Aug 29, 2014 at 11:12 am

    “I want people outside to know that even if we get cut into pieces, we won’t leave Jesus Christ.”

    A true follower of Christ. God bless you.

    “Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation? or distress? or famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword?”
    Romans 8:35

    • Kathy Brown says

      Aug 29, 2014 at 11:47 am

      Salah: Thank you for posting this wonderful verse.

      Oh my beloved sister in Christ Nazeera-you beautiful, heroic woman! You are a martyr, a true one; not to be confused with the sick murderers of Is-Slime…

      Christians/Catholics in the mideast? These are people who live lives of unthinkable courage, 24/7. I’m put to shame by them-here in the West the worst we face (yet) is whether to speak out in defense of Christ, the saints, the faith. To speak out!

      But they know every day that it could be their last. And they know, too, that their death will be tortuous, protracted, hideous.

      And still they follow our Blessed Savior.

      I will be praying TO this lady, asking her to intercede for me, she who now is so very close to the throne of the God Who received her into His kingdom. I ask her to obtain for me the grace of courage, of steadfastness. For indeed I have none, w/o the grace of God…

      • Champ says

        Aug 29, 2014 at 4:23 pm

        Hi Kathy,

        With all due respect, my dear sister, only Jesus our precious LORD and Savior is our intercessor …

        “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,” — 1 Timothy 2:5

        And “Got Questions” offers a thorough yet succinct answer to this question:

        Question: “What does the Bible say about praying to / speaking to / talking to the dead?”

        Answer: http://www.gotquestions.org/praying-to-the-dead.html

        Take care 🙂

        • Champ says

          Aug 29, 2014 at 4:33 pm

          ps …

          From “Got Questions” the portion that mentions talking to people without Christ does not apply to this precious sister, who was burned to death; so of course that portion doesn’t apply here. But “GQ” does mention that we shouldn’t even pray to those that are saved and with Christ:

          “Likewise, would a person in heaven be concerned for temporal problems on earth? God has provided His Son, Jesus Christ, to be the mediator between man and God (1 Timothy 2:5). With Jesus Christ as our mediator, we can go through Jesus to God.”

        • Kathy Brown says

          Aug 31, 2014 at 11:47 am

          Champ: As I noted in my post, my prayer to this saint is for intercession.

          As a Roman Catholic I follow Church teaching that the saints-and a lady like this-are known to us so that we may imitate them. In like manner, the Blessed Mother of God is the mediatrix of all grace, a la the wedding feast of Cana.

          I’m glad you posted this tho’. It’s often misunderstood by non-Catholics.

  6. Jeff says

    Aug 29, 2014 at 11:27 am

    I would be willing to be a shinny new dollar that you will not hear a peep from Obama, CAIR, ISNA or MSA or any other muslim organization either supporting this woman’s right to convert or condemning this satanic act which was directly linked to islamic theology.

  7. Walter Sieruk says

    Aug 29, 2014 at 2:47 pm

    This women’s Muslim brother tried to burn her to death to death in an act of “honor killing”. What a brutal and cruel person he must be ! One reason that he is so vicious is that he is the results of the system of Islam. As for his malicious and malice act of attempting to burn her to death because of “Islamic honor.” This type of a ruthless Islamic mindset has been elaborated on ,somewhat, in the book THEY MUST BE STOPPED by Brigitte Gabriel. Which reads “Honor killings are executed by slitting the victims’ throat, hatcheting them to, stabbing stabbing ,burning them to death, decapitation, bullets to the head and chest, or by any other means imaginable.” Indeed they must be stopped for the heinous and hideous actions of “honor killings” are part of the essence of the violence of Islam.

  8. Champ says

    Aug 29, 2014 at 4:27 pm

    Yemen: Woman burned to death by brother for converting to Christianity

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    How barbaric …

    And she was so brave and now she’s with Jesus! …but her brother’s a coward serving an evil cult: islam.

  9. Ronny Prazad says

    Aug 29, 2014 at 6:47 pm

    All flesh shall see the salvation of GOD-Luke 3:6. My dear brother in christ, only christ can give true comfort and strenght. Don’t worry our creator have a big plans for you and for your kids. The moment we repent and follow christ we become enemy of this world. Men only can kill the flesh but the Christ love us and reciving us with open hand in heaven and he crown us and also decalare us his son infront GOD. Surely Nazeera with christ now couse she ran a good race and won.

  10. Mo says

    Aug 29, 2014 at 10:25 pm

    This poor woman. Burning is supposed to be one of the most painful ways to die. How she must have suffered.

    What an evil cult Islam is. What other religion turns even family members against each other in this manner? Think about that. What sort of a person willingly and unrepentantly carries out such twisted, brutal attacks on their own family members just because they follow a religion with which they disagree? Or because they are female? Or because of the endless other reasons that Muslims give for committing such monstrous acts? Who does that? Who dreams up such evil?

    And to even let it happen in front their CHILDREN? Even most criminals have a bit of mercy towards children! Not in Islam. There is no mercy for anyone from this “god”, who is clearly Satan himself.

    Islam has no place in a civilized society. Period.

  11. Adrian says

    Aug 30, 2014 at 6:18 am

    Sorry of topic a bit here but maybe others have felt like this to? you guys really have to stop that horrible pop up that comes up every time some one enters your site, it’s beyond annoying i damn near put my fist through my screen every time i come in here.

  12. Laura says

    Aug 30, 2014 at 6:22 am

    “Defying common logic, Saeed said God allowed the atrocity to take place to “strengthen our faith and use us more in His Kingdom.”
    Whilst I have immense sympathy for this man and his children I can’t understand how he can believe that ‘god’ allowed it to happen…what sort of ‘god’ could allow a poor woman to be killed in such a horrendous way?

    • EYESOPEN says

      Aug 30, 2014 at 8:22 am

      Laura, Almighty God allows evil only to bring about a greater good. That is His way – and He does it all the time. Was not the horrible scourging and crucifixion of Jesus Christ the most evil act ever perpetrated? Look what good fruit Almighty God brought forth from that: the gift of our salvation and redemption and the ability to be with God in heaven for all eternity, if we but choose Christ’s free gift.

      I can bet that Nazeera is with Jesus in heaven; and is watching over her family with love. No more persecution. No more pain. For Saeed, what happened only seems to have reinforced his faith in Christ. Now Jesus never promised His followers a rose garden. He said: “If any would follow me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross daily and follow me.” Or to put it colloquially: No cross, no crown. I hope that helps to explain that which seems inexplicable.

      • Kathy Brown says

        Aug 30, 2014 at 9:36 pm

        Eyes: How perfectly, and beautifully, you put it! ‘My ways are not your ways, and your ways are not My ways’.

        This is of course the issue at the heart of faith. Those of us who have accepted that free gift: We experience God’s love and faithfulness, which is greater than the incomprehension we certainly feel at horrors like this.

        Which also explains why the Christians at the ‘mercy’ of these savages (who have none) refuse to renounce their faith. There is no ‘logical’, no ‘human’, explanation for this. None.

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