By Michael Ashcraft –
A vicious Koran teacher cracked her wooden tablet over Shania Gabo’s head as a punishment for not learning her daily allotment of memorization of the Koran (in Arabic) in Mogadishu, Somalia.
“I thought I was going to die,” Shania says on a Somalia Christian TV Ex-Muslims.video on YouTube. “There was blood all over my face. I cried and ran home.”
Shania never went back to learning the Koran.
When the al-Qaeda allegiant group Al-Shabaab took over 2006-07, Shania and her family immigrated to Sweden, where she married and raised a family. After some time, she wanted to learn English, so the family moved to England, where her husband drove a taxi.
A friend sent her a video that started out with Islamists praising Allah and ended with the brutal beheading of Nick Berg. She was caught off guard because the video started with something that inspired her.
“I didn’t know they were going to kill him,” she recalls. “He was sitting in an orange suit. I was thinking, ‘Are they praying for him?’ They were speaking Arabic. I can understand some Arabic. They finished reading the Koran and took a big knife and chopped his head off in front of the camera.
“I was shocked. I could not move. I started crying,” she adds. “For the first time, everything I believe in Islam just crashed and died. Why did this young innocent man have to die? What kind of god is Allah? This god is Satan.”
Trembling, she cried herself to sleep that night. She dreamed Jesus, but she didn’t know who he was.
“A man came from Heaven with a shining light,” she tells. “He was calling everyone in a voice so loud and so gentle, ‘Come, believe in me and you will be saved. People took my head and everyone bowed down and worshiped him. I worshiped him too.”
The next morning she was perplexed. Was the man Allah or Mohammad? she asked her husband. The answer was neither, because Allah doesn’t take the form of man, and Mohammad doesn’t let himself be worshiped.
The next night, she dreamed again. This time her mom was in her dream. Her mother asked her to read the Koran. But she looked steadfastly into her mother’s eyes.
“Mom,” she declared. “Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through him.”
That was weird because she had never read the Bible. She had never heard those words. They belong to John 14:6.
“I couldn’t control my mouth, what was coming out,” she explains.
Then the man she had dreamed the night prior showed up again. “He was holding me,” she remembers. “I saw him as my father.”
Fear not, Jesus told Shania. You are with me, and I am with you.
Today Shania and her husband Shino post videos on Somalia Christian TV Ex-Muslim, an example of how Muslim outreach has proliferated in recent years. The channel uploads content that is good for anyone, not just Somalis.
According to Pew Research, Somalia is 99.8% Sunni Muslim. The number of Christians is listed as 1,000 out of the 18.1 millions. These statistics may not show what people harbor in their heart, as apostasy is penalized with the death penalty; undercover Christians may abound. US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District hails from Mogadishu.
To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here.
Related articles:
- 37 Korans prove the Koran has NOT been perfectly preserved
- Mrs. Apostate converts to Christ
- Jay Smith
- Hatun Tash
- David Wood
About this writer: Michael Ashcraft pastors a church in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.
