By 
KANO, Nigeria — A federal high court in Nigeria has restrained authorities in the country’s Kano state and the Islamic religious police, known as Hisbah, from arresting a 22-year-old woman because she converted from Islam to Christianity and rejected a forced marriage.
In its May 26 ruling, the court described the actions taken against the woman, identified by the pseudonym “Sarah,” as a “flagrant violation” of her fundamental rights to human dignity and freedom of religion, according to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.
The court also ordered that she receive financial compensation, ADF said in an Aug. 11 report announcing the ruling.
Sarah, a resident of Kano state, reportedly fled her family home in 2025 after suffering abuse from her elder siblings, who were allegedly attempting to force her into marriage.
Her parents had died years earlier, and her siblings subsequently enlisted local Hisbah officials to have her arrested, according to ADF.
Sarah was reportedly detained for four days. She alleged that she was beaten and pressured to accept the marriage from which she had fled.
She later found refuge with a Christian family, the Abaras, and voluntarily converted to Christianity while staying with them, ADF reported.
Amid fears of further threats, the family helped her relocate to Jos in January. Her siblings subsequently accused the Abaras of kidnapping her.
On Feb. 24, Sarah filed a fundamental-rights enforcement action challenging the measures taken against her. Two days later, the Abaras were arraigned in Kano without legal representation.
The Federal High Court of Nigeria subsequently prohibited Kano state authorities and Hisbah officials from pursuing Sarah’s arrest because of her conversion or her refusal to enter the proposed marriage.
“The court’s ruling in Sarah’s case affirms that the Hisbah police have no jurisdiction over Christians or other non-Muslims,” ADF Senior Counsel for Global Religious Freedom Sean Nelson said.
He added: “Sarah’s choice to convert and reject a forced marriage is her right under law.”
Sarah welcomed the judgment and expressed gratitude to the Christian family that had sheltered her.
“The Abara family kept me safe in a time when I had nowhere else to go. I am grateful to them especially for introducing me to the Gospel. It is not against the law for me to choose my faith in Jesus,” she said.
She also expressed gratitude that the court had recognized her freedom to become a Christian and protected her from the religious police.
The criminal proceedings against the Abaras remain pending in Kano, with ADF providing legal assistance.
Previous cases involving Christian converts
Sarah’s case follows other reported incidents involving people who converted, or were suspected of converting, from Islam to Christianity in northern Nigeria.
In January 2018, the reported conversion of Nabila Umar Sanda, then a 19-year-old student at Bingham University in Abuja, attracted national attention after security officials intervened.
Media reports indicated that Nigeria’s Department of State Services arrested Sanda and some of her Christian associates after Islamic leaders learned of her conversion. Christian leaders Jeremiah Datim and Simput Dafup were also reportedly drawn into the case, which unfolded in Jos, Plateau state.
Hisbah organizations operate in several northern Nigerian states to enforce Islamic moral codes. They have faced allegations of interfering with Christians and other people who are not subject to Islamic religious obligations.
In November 2023, International Christian Concern reported that Hisbah officials in Kano stopped five Christian girls who were traveling to church. The girls were allegedly instructed to dress according to Islamic standards and prevented from attending church until the service had ended.
In another case, Pastor Yohanna Shuaibu was killed by a mob in Kano state in 2021 following allegations that he had helped convert a Muslim man to Christianity.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom reported that Shuaibu was attacked after being accused of involvement in the man’s conversion.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) reported that the man had left Islam but was attending neither a church nor a mosque. Members of the local Muslim community nevertheless reportedly assumed that he had become a Christian and blamed Shuaibu.
According to the organization, Shuaibu had returned to Massu village in Kano state’s Sumaila Local Government Area to evacuate children from a Christian school when the mob attacked him. He later died from injuries sustained in the attack.
This story was first published by ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa. It has been adapted by EWTN News.
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The solution for Nigeria is to be as compassionate and inclusive and mutually respectful and ecumenically interfaith and peace seeking above all as we are here in the U.S.A.:
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dei-hiring-boost-blue-state-muslim-commission-initiative-flies-face-trumps-anti-woke-push
Nigeria has Islamic religious police? Hisbah. Another name to learn in relation to the religion of peace.
Rhymes with jizyah…
Islam is a violent and abusive ideology pretending to represent the will of God.
Chris: With all due respect: I don’t believe they are “pretending”. We should give them ll the benefit of doubt and grant them the sincerity of their convictions.
James:
I am sure that many people holding Islamic beliefs hold such beliefs sincerely.
Be that as it may, my comment is not referring to Moslem people. My comment refers to the ideology of Islam, an artifact penned solely by one extremely violent man, in a space of 22-23 years, from 610-632 AD, and spread by the sword for 1,400 years thereafter.
My conclusion is that this man was pretending to speak in the name of God.
Thank God this young woman is safe and blessings to the family that helped her.
Blessings to the Abara family indeed. A clear example of the maxim that no good deed goes unpunished.
While it is important that we protect human rights, at the same time we must not become Islamophobic.
It’s more important that we’re not stupid, and we recognize that Islam has a fourteen century record of militancy and conquest. However, we are, and the ruling elite are using Islam in order to extinguish entire peoples.
The problem with you in the political left is that you are xenomaniacs, and attempt to attach “phobia” to to the rejection of your manias.
“Homophobia”, “Islamophobia”, “Transphobia” all arise from the conceit that rejection of leftist agenda can’t possibly be reasonable and rational.
You go to Ceuta, and preach to the invading hordes.
Pitchfork: I may be left of you at times, but that does not place me inn the political left. Political affiliation is a continuum between two extremes and there are many points on it. The Nixon right was quite removed from that of Barry Goldwater and the Berne Sanders left is quite different than that of Harry Truman. In other words there are many shades of red and blue.
A quote often attributed to Lenin “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” New version: “The Christian will welcome Muslims to their countries and then pay them to destroy the country’s civilization”
Lenin also did refer to naive allies as “simpletons” or “fellow travelers” (попутчики).
I believe “islamophobia” is an ideological tool used to program people not to express concerns about the violence heralded by the ideology of Islam, and emanating from the vanguards of violent Islam.
I believe islamo-opposition is more candid and apt, as it acknowledges the violent pathology manifested by self-identifying Islamists.
To me, Islamophobia means irrational fear of Islam. I don’t consider fear of Islam irrational.
I’ll go with Tim Dieppe, director of Christian Concern, who objects to Muslim-hatred but firmly eschews the term Islamophobia.
Agree.
Islamo-phobia is an abusive term concocted by the intersectionalist-political-cult to psychologically disarm peace-loving citizens in the west from voicing opposition to the violent pathologies originating in and exported by Islam.
It’s the same thing the intersectionalist-political-cult did with homo-phobia, to disarm citizens from voicing opposition to pathological LGBTQ behavior.
If anyone were to accuse me of Islamophobia, my first response would be to ask, “Have you read the Quran?” If their answer is (almost certainly) “no” then I would challenge them to read it then get back to me. The basis for the violence and dishonestly toward non-Muslims is all there in black and white. And don’t ever let anyone tell you that “Jihad” means an internal struggle. It has a secondary meaning of a struggle or fight against the enemies of Islam. And who are the enemies of Islam? Everyone not Muslim.
Were the heroic defenders of western Christian civilisation, including Charles Martel, Isabel and Ferdinand, Jan Sobieski guilty of Islamophobia?
In this current age given to pathological benevolence I am inclined to believe our heroes stand condemned.
One of the things that saddens Christians the most is what happened to the remaining parts of the Holy Cross that were kept in Jerusalem (some parts had been sent to Constantinople, today’s Istanbul): it was mockingly dragged through the streets of Damascus and eventually “disappeared.”.
Islam conquered Jerusalem (638 A.D.) and and soon the Holy Land and North Africa and most of Spain, and the Anatolian Peninsula (“Asia Minor”, today’s Turkey), all lands that were mostly Christians by the seventh century when the big jihad began. —After the First Crusade reconquered the Holy land, Jerusalem stayed again in Christian hands until the rise of the Sultan Saladin.
—Several key primary sources from the late 12th and early 13th centuries narrate the capture of the True Cross at the Battle of Hattin (1187) where Saladin defeated the Christians and its subsequent humiliation ordered by Saladin. These accounts come from both Muslim chroniclers who witnessed the events and Christian observers who recorded the aftermath.
—Muslim Primary Sources
The most detailed accounts come from historians within Saladin’s own circle:
• Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani (1125–1201): A secretary and eyewitness to Saladin’s campaigns, he wrote Al-Barq al-Shami (The Syrian Lightning). He explicitly describes the capture of the Cross and NOTES THAT SALADIN ORDERED IT TO BE PARADED MOCKINGLY before the defeated King Guy of Lusignan to symbolize the collapse of Frankish morale. He confirms the relic was sent to Damascus as a trophy.
• Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad (1145–1234): A close confidant and biographer of Saladin, his work The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin (al-Nawādir al-Sultāniyya) details the battle’s aftermath. HE RECORDS THAT THE CROSS WAS TAKEN TO DAMASCUS, WHERE IT WAS DRAGGED THROUGH THE STREETS AND TREATED WITH CONTEMPT TO DEMONSTRATE ISLAMIC VICTORY.
• Ibn al-Athir (1160–1233): Although not present at Hattin, his universal chronicle Al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh is a definitive source for the period. He corroborates the account that the True Cross was fixed upside down on a lance and sent to Damascus following the battle.
—Christian Primary Sources
Christian sources, often written by captives or those closely connected to the defeated army, lament the loss and confirm the humiliation:
• Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum (The Little Book of the Conquest of the Holy Land by Saladin): Written shortly after 1187 by an anonymous English monk, this text expresses deep anguish over the capture. It confirms the relic WAS TAKEN BY THE MUSLIMS AND TREATED AS A SPOIL OF WAR, ALIGNING WITH THE REPORTS OF ITS PUBLIC DEGRADATION IN DAMASCUS.
• The Chronicle of Ernoul: This Old French continuation of William of Tyre describes the battle and the capture of the Cross, noting the profound psychological impact of its loss and the reports of it BEING DRAGGED IN THE DUST.
Specific Details of the Parade
These sources collectively establish that the relic was not merely stored but actively used for psychological warfare. They agree on the following specific actions taken in Damascus:
• THE CROSS WAS PARADED UPSIDE DOWN, OFTEN ATTACHED TO A LANCE.
• IT WAS DRAGGED THROUGH THE STREETS, SOMETIMES DESCRIBED AS BEING TIED TO A HORSE’S TAIL OR PULLED IN THE DUST.
• The event was a public spectacle designed to humiliate the Christian faith and celebrate the Ayyubid victory.
The Holy Cross was later sent to Baghdad as a diplomatic gift where it subsequently disappeared from the historical record.
For much of this see
Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West
https://www.amazon.com/Sword-Scimitar-Fourteen-Centuries-between/dp/0306825554