Shortly after their father died, Amara and her older brother left their village in the Somali desert to live with their uncle in the city. Their family thought it would be a positive change for the teenage Amara to have a male relative in her life, but they didn’t expect the move to lead her away from Islam.
Shortly after moving in with her uncle, Amara began speaking with her new neighbors. To her surprise, she learned that they were not Somali — and they were Christians.
“I’d always been taught that everyone who is not Somali is Christian,” she said, “that the evil we see on TV and movies is because they are Christians. When I met my new neighbors, they were different. They called themselves Christians, but weren’t drunkards, adulterers or immoral like I was taught.”
The Christian family welcomed Amara into their home, even sharing meals with her. She noticed that before each meal, they thanked God for their food in such a casual way that they sounded as if they were talking to their father.
“It was different than what I had seen on TV,” she said. “Sitting with them and listening and seeing it, I realized I wanted it. That’s how I wanted to pray. That’s how I wanted to do it, except the part at the end when they said ‘in the name of Jesus.’ That’s the part I struggled with.”
Questioning Everything
The family eventually began to talk to Amara about God and religion, using the Bible to help correct misunderstandings she had about Christianity. Wanting to learn more, Amara asked her neighbors for a Bible to read in secret.
As Amara read the Bible, she struggled to reconcile the Jesus she was now learning about with the Jesus she had read about in the Quran. She had always been taught that Jesus was merely a prophet, and she knew both books couldn’t be true.
“The Quran says the Bible has been twisted and distorted,” she said. “Yet as I read the Bible, I was drawn to it, convinced of it. But I thought even if this is true, there is no way I can accept it. I’m a Somali. There’s no other world I can go live in. If I accept it, I will be killed. I won’t have a life. I won’t be married. I will be without a family.”
Understanding the possible consequences, Amara began to question her uncle and brother about the Quran. The questions made them angry; they couldn’t bear the thought of one of their own questioning her identity as a Muslim, which was synonymous with being Somali.
Amara’s brother tried to draw her back to Islam by making her watch several Islamic videos. But they had the opposite effect. One video taught that she couldn’t be friends with Christians, such as the kind neighbors who had introduced her to Jesus.
Amara challenged her brother, which only angered him more.
“You are shaming us!” he yelled. “You’re doubting the teachings of the sheikhs. Are you an infidel?”
Amara’s brother beat her, and she was then sent back to her village to live with her mother. Clearly, her family thought, she had lost her way while living in the city.
When she arrived in the village, several sheikhs were waiting for her at the local mosque. For five days, they surrounded her and chanted passages from the Quran. They spit on her and then spit in a bowl, forcing her to drink from it for “purification” purposes; they believed they were removing the devil from her.
The sheikhs’ prayers, however, weren’t in line with Amara’s heart.
“My heart was completely against it,” she said. “I had no hope in these prayers. I didn’t want this life they had planned for me, and I felt more helpless than ever. I thought my life was over. I had to run away.”
In Jesus’ Name
Amara decided to leave her family, knowing they might come after her and kill her.
She put on her headscarf and headed for the bus station. “I got the last ticket for the bus, but I had to run,” she said. “My heart was just beating. Will they come after me? Will I get away? I was just praying that I would get away.”
After two hours on the road, the bus broke down. All of the passengers except Amara got off the bus. She just sat there, worried.
Then she remembered the prayers that her neighbors had taught her, and she knew that to pray in Jesus’ name meant to believe in Him. She wasn’t sure who He was to her, so she asked God to prove whether Jesus was real as the neighbors and the Bible said He was. She also asked for God’s protection — in Jesus’ name.
Then she felt a hand on her shoulder and heard someone whisper in her ear: “I am real and true. You should believe in me.” She looked behind her, but no one was there. Then she heard shouts of joy outside; the bus had been fixed.
“My prayers were answered,” she said. “Somehow I was saved.”
Amara returned to the city where she had been introduced to Christ, started a new life and eventually got married. She and her husband, “Jeremiah,” soon moved to Kenya, where they ministered to Somali believers from Muslim backgrounds.
In April 2015, Jeremiah was arrested after being accused of funding terrorists. The real reason for his arrest, however, was thought to be his association with Somali Christians from Muslim backgrounds. Investigators failed to find a link to terrorism and he was released after a few days.
Amara and Jeremiah now live in a VOM safe house with their three children in Kenya, where they minister to young Somali Christian women who have fled persecution from their Muslim families. They share their lives with these women and lead them in Bible studies. The couple also travels to northern Kenya once a month, reaching out to Somali communities by offering soap-making demonstrations. VOM provides them with resources for training and discipleship.
Despite everything she’s been through, Amara said she knows she’s on the right path.
“I am a Somali Christian, a contradiction,” she said. “And it hasn’t been easy, especially those first years moving from house to house. The threats. The loneliness. Following Christ cost me everything, but it was worth it.”
Amara asks VOM supporters to pray for the persecuted believers she and Jeremiah are serving and to pray for God’s guidance as they continue to serve Him in the Horn of Africa.
Guide