Once Sentenced to Hang in Sudan, Mariam Ibrahim Meets Her Advocate After 12 Years
In 2014 a Khartoum court ordered 100 lashes and death for the young Christian mother. On Oct. 27 in Falls Church, Va., she finally stood face to face with a Baptist leader who would not stay silent.
See where this is ›FALLS CHURCH, Va. —
For 12 years Mariam Ibrahim and the Rev. Dr. A. Roy Medley knew each other only by name. On the evening of Oct. 27 they met for the first time, at Hoge Chapel of Columbia Church in Falls Church, Va., where the religious freedom group 21Wilberforce gave Medley its 2026 Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Award, the Baptist Standard reported. The Alabama Baptist republished the story Nov. 6.
“Meeting Dr. Roy Medley in person was an emotional and unforgettable moment for me,” Ibrahim said.
See where this is ›In May 2014 a court in Khartoum, Sudan, sentenced Ibrahim to 100 lashes and death by hanging. Her father was Muslim, but her mother raised her as a Christian. Because Sudanese law counted her as a Muslim, her faith was prosecuted as apostasy, and her marriage to Daniel Wani, a Christian man, was treated as adultery. She was eight months pregnant, and soon after the sentence she gave birth to her daughter while chained to the floor of her prison cell.
At the time Medley was general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA and chaired the governing board of the National Council of Churches. “When I learned of Mariam's arrest and unjust death sentence by the court in Northern Sudan, I could not be silent,” he said. He spoke out against the sentence and joined a delegation of Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders who met with Sudan's ambassador to the United States. Medley told the ambassador that he and others were willing to travel to Sudan.
Medley said the delegation's visit added to the international pressure that led to Ibrahim's release the next day. Sudanese authorities then blocked her from leaving the country, and she took refuge at the U.S. Embassy until July 2014, when she and her family left Sudan for good. She later wrote a memoir, “Shackled,” and became an advocate for religious freedom herself.
Before the award was presented, former Congressman Frank Wolf, for whom it is named, told of a 1985 trip to Romania when believers pressed crumpled notes with names into his hands. “Someone hands you a name,” he said. “What do you do with it?”
Medley, whose work spans more than five decades, now leads the Burma Advocacy Group, a coalition of more than 20 church and advocacy groups representing the Burmese diaspora in the United States. Accepting the award, he said, “Let us together hew a rock of hope.” The original story was written by Lou Ann Sabatier of 21Wilberforce.
