The board of trustees of an Islamic primary school located in the eastern region of Uganda, has voted to fire the headteacher after staff members learnt that he renounced Islam to follow Jesus, and also overheard him praying in Christ’s name.
Mr Yusufu Mwanje who led Ibun-baz Primary School explained to media that for the safety of his Job, he wanted to keep his faith in Christ secret however, his fellow Muslim teachers noticed his absence at Muslim prayer meetings and reported to the school management board.
At a meeting with the school board on March 27, they asked Mwanje why he was not attending mosque prayers. “I told them that I was praying from my house,” he said, adding, “They accepted, but very reluctantly.”
Mwanje told MorningStar News (MSN), a US-based organisation that addresses Christian persecution around the globe, that on April 1, 2022, he woke up at 3 a.m. to pray to the Lord.
The new Christian convert did not know that a school staff member who lived next to his house was awake, hearing – as well as recording the prayers.
Burnt, beaten for faith in Christ
As he finished the prayers at 4:45 a.m. Yusufu says he heard a knock at the door.
“As I opened the door, there were people outside my door. They began shouting, ‘Allah akbar [the jihadist slogan, ‘God is greater’]! Allah akbar! Allah akbar! This is a kafir [infidel], this is kafir…They grabbed me and took me inside a mosque and started beating me badly and accusing me of heading a Muslim school yet I had converted to Christianity. Others shouted, ‘A liar, a liar, a liar…He deserves the death penalty.”
The attackers continued beating him, he narrated the ordeal to MSN.
Thankfully, Yusuf had been informed that as a new convert he might experience times of persecution, and that during such instances, “I should call the name of Jesus,” he said.
“As I mentioned the name Jesus in a low voice, one attacker said, ‘Azab Azab,’ meaning ‘punishment’ in Arabic. Immediately, two Islamic teachers named Ustaz Hamudan and Hashim Sajabbi brought two old jerry cans and lit it with fire and started burning me with it. It was too painful. I fainted.”
An elderly Islamic teacher, Alhaji Bruhan, intervened and told them not kill him, that Allah would kill him, Mwanje stated. “He instructed some to take me to the school clinic for treatment,” he said. “I then realized that Jesus had come to save me.”
At the clinic, he received a painkiller. School officials then called a meeting and fired him from his position at the school.
“I didn’t remove any property of mine, I left empty-handed,” he said.
Mwanje says he called the Christian who led him to the Lord following the ordeal. He arrived at his house and took him to a church site, where he was treated for five days before transferring to Iganga Hospital.
He received treatment there for third-degree burns on his leg and second-degree burns on his back, which was blistered and swollen.
According to MSN, two of Mwanje’s children remain at the school, where along with others they are memorizing extensive passages of the Koran. He has six children between the ages of 5 and 20.
