Ex-Addict in Somalia Driven from Home for Accepting Christ

Location of Lower Juba Region, Somalia. (Map data © 2025 Google)

NAIROBI, Kenya (Christian Daily International–Morning Star News) – Muslim parents in southern Somalia were overjoyed to see their missing 20-year-old son, a drug addict, return home free of substance abuse this month.

When they discovered that his transformation sprang from putting his faith in Christ, however, they drove him from their home in Hararoba, near Afmadow in Lower Juba Region, on May 19.

The young man had come to Christ on April 20 after an underground Somali pastor shared the gospel with him.

“On May 17, he decided to return back home, and the family was very excited and happy to see their son again smartly dressed and well groomed,” said the pastor, who like the convert is unnamed for security reasons. “The parents watched him for two days, and on May 19 they started interrogating him. They asked him to explain to them how he left the drugs as they wondered about the changes seen in his life.”

The convert told his parents how the pastor had led him to Christ, he said.

“I told them what had happened to me, and that I asked Issa [Jesus] to come into my life, and since then transformation started in my life after accepting Him as my Lord and Savior,” the convert told Morning Star News. “They then asked me to pray the Islamic way.”

Noting that he did not pray in the Muslim manner, his father told him, “You were better when you were performing prayers before receiving Issa. Now you have become worse. Leave this house and never come back,” according to the convert.

Now living on the street again, he said his family has become an enemy.

“I was not expecting such a terrible experience after receiving Issa,” he said. “My mother who used to be very lovely and friendly to me and who even used to give me some money secretly to buy cigarettes has now turned against me and even denied me breakfast at home. Now that I have loved Issa, I do not have a family standing with me. I do no not know what to do. I need prayers.”

The underground pastor said he was trying to connect him with a Christian cell group.

“It looks very difficult, but we are trusting God to open the door at this difficult moment,” he said. “We need prayers that God may provide security, food and accommodation for him.”

When he first met the convert on April 20, the young man was addicted “to all kinds of drugs” and felt utterly hopeless, the pastor said.

“I began sharing with him the love of God who sent Issa to come and seek and save the lost,” he said. “He confessed that it was his first time to feel as a human being loved by God. The young man decided to yearn and to hear more about Issa. Soon he realized that the good news of Issa was for everyone.”

After spending the whole day explaining to him the way of salvation from Christ, the young man put his faith in Him as Lord and Savior, he said.

“I stayed with him for five days, and in my amazement he got transformed and left taking drugs,” the pastor said. “He promised to go back to his parents who had not seen him for a couple of months.”

Somalia’s constitution establishes Islam as the state religion and prohibits the propagation of any other religion, according to the U.S. State Department. It also requires that laws comply with sharia (Islamic law) principles, with no exceptions in application for non-Muslims.

The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to mainstream schools of Islamic jurisprudence. An Islamic extremist group in Somalia, Al Shabaab, is allied with Al Qaeda and adheres to the teaching.

Al Shabaab or Al Shabaab sympathizers also have killed several non-local people in northern Kenya since 2011, when Kenyan forces led an African coalition into Somalia against the rebels in response to terrorist attacks on tourists and others on Kenya’s coast.

Somalia is ranked 2^nd on Christian support group Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.

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