ZANZIBAR, Tanzania — Far from the world media’s gaze in remote islands off the eastern coast of Africa, church buildings are razed and Christians are ostracized and imprisoned for their faith. On Tanzania’s island of Zanzibar, in one weeklong stretch in December, Muslim extremists destroyed two church buildings, Christian leaders said.
The extremists torched the building of the Pentecostal Evangelical Fellowship of Africa in Mtufani Mwera, on Dec. 3, Pastor Julius Makoho said.
The previous week in Kianga, a throng of Islamic extremists demolished Siloam Church’s building. Pastor Boniface Kaliabukama said more than 100 Muslim extremists arrived at the church compound Nov. 26 chanting “Allahu Akbar (God is greater).”
Further south, in Comoros a convert from Islam is suffering from a skin disease contracted in prison after his family threw him out. The ordeal of Musta Kim began in March 2010 when, returning from an overnight prayer meeting, he found someone had broken into his house in Mdjwayezi village.
While investigating, police stumbled onto Christian materials — a Bible and film — which changed the course of inquiry from pursuing thieves to asking why Kim was practicing a forbidden faith. With his health deteriorating, he made an appeal in the high court regarding his eight months of incarceration without trial and he was released Feb. 29, 2011. His family, however, rejected him. “I cannot sleep at night — the whole body is itching and hurting,” he said.
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