Muslim man stabs wife, mother of 6, to death for attending church, accepting Christ

A mother of six children has been stabbed to death by her Muslim husband in Uganda after she attended her first church service, sources said.

Nasiimu Mirembe, whose children range in age from 3 to 18, had put her faith in Christ on March 21 after accepting the gospel from a friend in eastern Uganda’s Busembatya town council. She was 41.

She and her friend were on their way to a church service on March 23 when a Muslim neighbour, Awudu Mbulalina, saw them.

Mirembe feared Mbulalina would tell her husband that she was heading toward a church service and that he would kill her, but the friend encouraged her to trust in God and persuaded her to continue on.

After the service, where Mirembe was introduced as a new Christian, they were returning home when they met her husband, Adamu Mukungu, about 200 metres from the church site, the friend said.

“I saw you come out of the church,” Mukungu told his wife, according to the friend. “What you have done is very bad, especially during this period of Ramadan.”

“Immediately he started slapping his wife,” the friend said. “I started screaming and shouting for help. Mukungu then removed a long knife and started cutting her with it.”

When Mukungu saw several church members led by a church elder rushing over, he fled, the friend said.

They took Mirembe to a nearby clinic for medical treatment, but after two hours, her condition worsened and she was referred to a larger hospital in Bugiri, where doctors found extensive internal and external bleeding.

Doctors declared her dead at 3:45 a.m. on March 24.

Mukungu has absconded, and police were still looking for him, a church member said.

Mirembe was mother to two sons and four daughters.

The attack was the latest of many instances of persecution of Christians in Uganda that Morning Star News has documented.

Uganda’s constitution and other laws provide for religious freedom, including the right to propagate one’s faith and convert from one faith to another. Muslims make up no more than 12% of Uganda’s population, with high concentrations in eastern areas of the country.