I’m writing this post because of the urgency of this atrocity.  The story below is from “Christianity Today” magazine.

Update (May 15): Given until today to recant her faith by a Sudanese court, Meriam Yahia Ibrahim instead declared she remained a Christian at today’s hearing. The judge at the Public Order Court in El Haj Yousif Khartoum then confirmed her sentence of 100 lashes for adultery and death by hanging for apostasy.

“I am a Christian, and I have never been a Muslim,” Ibrahim told the judge after a Muslim scholar spent 40 minutes persuading her to recant, reports Morning Star News, which first broke the news of Ibrahim’s case. In response, the judge told her, “The court has sentenced you to be hanged till you are dead.”

However, the sentence is to be carried out two years after her second child’s birth later this month, not shortly after the birth as previously reported.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide confirmed the death sentence in the case drawing international attention, calling the ruling a “violation of the Sudanese Constitution and of international conventions to which Sudan is party.”

Middle East Concern reports that Ibrahim’s lawyer is appealing the ruling. Ibrahim’s husband was also not permitted to witness the hearing, and has been denied visitation rights to see his wife and son while they are detained in prison.

Ahead of today’s hearing, Amnesty International condemned Ibrahim’s death sentence and called for her immediate release. According to Manar Idriss, Amnesty International’s Sudan researcher:

The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion is abhorrent and should never be even considered. ‘Adultery’ and ‘apostasy’ are acts which should not be considered crimes at all, let alone meet the international standard of “most serious crimes” in relation to the death penalty. It is flagrant breach of international human rights law.

World Watch Monitor reports more background on Ibrahim’s case, including how her brother first notified authorities about her alleged adultery.

I ask one question:  Why don’t we hear our government speaking out against this cruelty?  Perhaps conversations are going on behind the scenes.  Perhaps.  Frankly, I don’t trust this administration to be doing much of anything.  (Hopefully I’m wrong.)  I realize the U.S. can’t intervene in every act of injustice and inhumanity in the world.  (That’s what we say about the kidnapping of 200-plus Christian girls in Nigeria.)  I realize Sudan is a sovereign nation.  Further I realize that this kind of brutality isn’t atypical among some Muslim governments.  Nevertheless:  why don’t we hear our government speaking out against this cruelty?  President Obama, why are you not openly condemning the Sudanese government for this inhuman behavior?

The reality is that we Christians often can’t depend on our government to do what’s right.  This may be a case in point.   But we have a King who sits on a higher throne.  Let’s appeal to him.