El Geneina, West Darfur state, Sudan. (Sudan Envoy, Creative Commons)

JUBA, South Sudan (Morning Star News) – The Muslim family of a young man in Sudan’s Darfur Region has disowned him and compelled his wife to divorce him because he converted to Christianity, an area source said.

The convert in El Geneina, capital of West Darfur state, put his faith in Christ in January of last year. A hardline Muslim identified only as Sheikh Amaar discovered his faith and on Aug. 23 told him to return to Islam or face serious consequences, the source said.

The Christian, whose name is withheld for security purposes, did not fear for his life and continued growing in his faith, the source said. The sheikh (Islamic teacher) later incited family members and other area Muslims to attack him.

A relative told him, “You are no longer a member of our family, because you have changed your religion,” and on Oct. 9 the Christian left his home, the source told Morning Star News.

After he and other converts from Islam were accused of apostasy last year, they took refuge with friends in another location.

One of the converts who has also gone into hiding with him told Morning Star News, “Remember us in your prayers because of these challenges we are facing.”

Sudan was ranked No. 5 among the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian in Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List (WWL), down from No. 8 the prior year.

Conditions in Sudan worsened as civil war that broke out in April 2023 intensified. Sudan registered increases in the number of Christians killed and sexually assaulted and Christian homes and businesses attacked, according to the WWL report.

“Christians of all backgrounds are trapped in the chaos, unable to flee. Churches are shelled, looted and occupied by the warring parties,” the report stated.

Since April 2023 militants of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), have been battling the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and each Islamist force has attacked displaced Christians on accusations of supporting the other’s combatants.

The conflict between the RSF and the SAF, which had shared military rule in Sudan following an October 2021 coup, has terrorized civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, killing tens of thousands and displacing more than 12.36 million people within and beyond Sudan’ borders, according to the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR).

The SAF’s Gen. Abdelfattah al-Burhan and his then-vice president, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, were in power when civilian parties in March 2023 agreed on a framework to re-establish a democratic transition the next month, but disagreements over military structure torpedoed final approval.

Burhan sought to place the RSF – a paramilitary outfit with roots in the Janjaweed militias that had helped former strongman Omar al-Bashir put down rebels – under the regular army’s control within two years, while Dagolo would accept integration within nothing fewer than 10 years.

Both military leaders have Islamist backgrounds while trying to portray themselves to the international community as pro-democracy advocates of religious freedom.

Sudan had dropped out of the top 10 of the WWL list for the first time in six years when it first ranked No. 13 in 2021.

Following two years of advances in religious freedom in Sudan after the end of the Islamist dictatorship under Bashir in 2019, the specter of state-sponsored persecution returned with the military coup of Oct. 25, 2021.

After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government had managed to undo some sharia (Islamic law) provisions. It outlawed the labeling of any religious group “infidels” and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death.

With the Oct. 25, 2021 coup, Christians in Sudan feared the return of the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law. Abdalla Hamdok, who had led a transitional government as prime minister starting in September 2019, was detained under house arrest for nearly a month before he was released and reinstated in a tenuous power-sharing agreement in November 2021.

Hamdock had been faced with rooting out longstanding corruption and an Islamist “deep state” from Bashir’s regime – the same deep state that is suspected of rooting out the transitional government in the Oct. 25, 2021 coup.

The U.S. State Department in 2019 removed Sudan from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom” and upgraded it to a watch list. Sudan had previously been designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.

In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its Special Watch List.

The Christian population of Sudan is estimated at 2 million, or 4.5 percent of the total population of more than 43 million.

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