An evangelist who had been preaching at a gospel event was murdered by suspected Islamic extremists in Kampala, Uganda, last month.
Alfred Kitenga was reportedly beaten and stabbed around 9:30 p.m. on April 9 as he and his wife, Anna Grace Nabirye, were returning from a preaching event in the Namungoona area of Kampala, according to a report from Morning Star News.
The couple was reportedly approached by four people who claimed to be motorcycle taxi drivers.
Nabirye recounted that they claimed to have been fellow Christians attending the gospel event, and offered the couple a free ride home.
“We believed them because they said they were fellow believers who had listened to the message,” Nabirye described to Morning Star News.
But the four riders claimed that traffic congestion meant an alternate route would be ideal, and the couple agreed.
Nabirye grew uneasy when she overheard one of the drivers speaking on the phone in a language she did not know.
Three more men then showed up, at which point the riders assaulted the couple.
They were beaten severely, and Kitenga was fatally stabbed.
Nabirye was allowed to survive and was left near her home.
She told church leaders, who found Kitenga’s body on a roadside and notified the police.
Kitenga’s body was then taken to a morgue for analysis.
“This is a painful loss for the body of Christ,” one local church leader said in reaction to the incident.
While more than four-fifths of Ugandans identify as Christians, the Islamic minority has been known to attack believers, according to a report from Open Doors.
Christians especially face “frequent attacks by Muslim mobs” in the eastern part of the country.
Members of the Islamic minority try to dissuade conversions to Christianity.
Converts are “viewed as betraying their faith and community and face potential social ostracization, violent physical assault, expulsion from home and community and in extreme cases killing,” according to Open Doors.
Islam indeed remains “the foremost driver of religious persecution in Uganda, especially as Islamic communities are aggressively working to expand their influence and reach.”
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