Speaker describes ordeal in Sudanese prison

The persecution of Christians in Muslim nations and the transforming power of prayer were the themes of the 31st annual Suffolk Leadership Prayer Breakfast on Thursday.

After watching a short film about the slaughter of 21 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya by hooded and masked soldiers from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, hundreds of people who gathered for the prayer breakfast at the National Guard Armory in Suffolk listened as Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice interviewed a Christian woman who faced down a death sentence in Sudan for refusing to renounce her faith.

Through an interpreter, Dr. Meriam Yahia Ibrahim described her imprisonment following her May 2014, conviction on charges of apostasy and adultery. Though she said she had always been a Christian, Ibrahim, a Sudanese citizen, was charged with apostasy when a relative told authorities she had committed adultery by marrying a Christian man, Daniel Wani, who is an American citizen and a Christian.

The adultery charge stemmed from the tenet of sharia law that states children must follow the faith of their Muslim fathers, which would have meant she could not marry a Christian. The apostasy charge was a result of the argument that she had turned away from Islam to become a Christian.

Ibrahim was sentenced to 100 lashes for the adultery charge and to death by hanging for the apostasy charge.

Her six-month imprisonment in Sudan made headlines around the world and resulted in an international outcry that finally resulted in her release. Her 20-month-old son was imprisoned with her, and she was forced to give birth to her daughter while she was shackled to the floor in leg irons.

But she refused to lose hope, she said Thursday.

“The Lord sets prisoners free,” she said in English, her only English statement of the interview.

“I always felt that God was going to pull us through, and whatever He did was fine,” she added through her interpreter, Claire M. Haddad, a retired author and professor from the University of Beirut who now lives in Virginia.

“Even through the troubled times that I went through, I still depended on the Bible and the words of the Lord,” she said.

Sekulow explained to the audience that if Ibrahim had been executed, under sharia law, her children would not have been returned to their father.

Whenever he would visit his wife in prison, Daniel Wani said, their son, Martin Wani, “would cry to come with me.”

“It was horrible,” he said.

Asked why she would not renounce her faith, Ibrahim described feeling the power of other people’s prayers for her.

“When people began to pray for me, I could feel it,” she said. “It had to be faith that pulled me through.”

“Since the beginning, she was firm, and I knew she would not renounce her faith,” Daniel Wani said. “Prayers bring us together, in spite of our differences.”

Ibrahim was finally released from prison in June 2014 and was allowed — following a re-arrest at the Khartoum airport, three days of further imprisonment and then a month of extensive negotiations for her release while she took refuge in the American embassy — to fly to Italy, where she met Pope Francis.

Other speakers at the event included Delegate Chris Jones; former Delegate Glenn Oder; Mayor Linda Johnson; U.S. Army Col. Scott D. Brooks of Joint Staff in Suffolk; Brig. Gen. Timothy P. Williams, adjutant general of the Virginia National Guard; Dwight Newingham; Felicia Blow of Paul D. Camp Community College; Suffolk graphic designer Michael Podesta; state Senator Louise Lucas; and Virginia Supreme Court Justice D. Arthur Kelsey of Suffolk.

Courtney Garrett, the 2014-2015 Miss Virginia and first runner-up in the Miss America Pageant, provided special music for the occasion, with accompaniment by Michael P. Daniels, principal cellist with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.

“Prayer is a source of inspiration and comfort in our country,” Johnson said in her comments. “Prayer transforms individuals and nations.”