KIJABE, Kenya - It’s just plain bad luck sharing a name with one of West’s most wanted. But Mohamed Omar, one of many Somali refugees living in Kenya, is good with it.
Stranger still, this man is a professing Christian.
Omar’s short-cropped hair is turning gray now, but his ebony skin still looks young. His exceptionally good English and plump face give him the air of a rich man. But the first thing you’ll notice is an ugly scar carved along his left eyebrow.
I’ve been told he has a story to tell, and I’ve met him at Kijabe hospital in Kenya, where he now serves as chaplain.
"I chewed Miraa [an East-Africa drug] and drank beer almost every day," he says."What are your intentions?” he asks, expressionless, but intimidating. I return my tape recorder to its case, a little taken back, and tell him I’ll be happy to just take notes.
Mohamed Omar was born in Somalia, the son of a wealthy Muslim merchant. Studying at home, then abroad in Russia and Ireland, Omar returned to a comfortable government job in Mogadishu.
This was home, until civil war broke out in 1991(remember the movie Blackhawk Down?). He moved to a largely Somali community in Nairobi to escape the violence, but lost his job in the process.
"I chewed Miraa and drank beer almost every day," he says.
Omar says the best way
to share your faith with a Muslim
is to pray for and love them.
One afternoon while out walking the colourful, but lawless streets of Eastleigh, Omar noticed two Mogadishu acquaintances sitting on the curb reading a Bible. Confused, then enraged, he informed them that Muslims should not touch such a filthy book. “But,” he said, realizing his overreaction, ‘if you are reading to know how bad Christians are, then that is fine.”
Later the same men tried to get him to read a Bible.
“I was reluctant to open it” he says. Omar knew that Christians revelled in alcohol, prostitution and “all other kinds of evils.” Moreover, he thought he might go blind just opening the forbidden text.
When it finally dawned on Omar that his friends had become ‘kafiri’—had renounced Islam— he was furious.
“I almost broke the relationship with them,” he says.
Yet there was something strangely “attractive” about Christians and their blasphemous lifestyles. “As I continued to learn the Christian faith and the Bible, I asked myself many questions,” he says. “In Islam there’s no assurance of salvation…it made my life hopeless and uncertain.”
Understanding steadily pierced Omar’s cataracted soul. He had thought the scriptures might blind him; instead they opened his eyes.
“I repented of my sins and asked the Lord to be my personal saviour the rest of my life,” he tells me.
But Omar's hasn't lived happily ever after; he didn’t keep things to himself. At home he insisted on sharing his newfound salvation—his assured salvation—with family and friends.
“My father disowned me while my clan vowed to kill me”"My father disowned me while my clan vowed to kill me," he recounts.
Shocking everyone around him, Mohammad refused to renounce Christ and beg Allah’s forgiveness. Not only did he reject his Islam, but he began preaching Christ to others! This was unacceptable, and one night several neighbourhood Somalis broke into his home and awaited his return.
They hit me at the back of my neck and slashed the top of my face with a panga," says Mohammad. He awoke several hours later with a pounding headache, drenched in a pool of his own blood— unwanted, hated, and terrified…but grateful to be alive.
Omar fled to Ethiopia where he remained for several years. But “the Lord put a burden in my“They hit me at the back of my neck and slashed the top of my face with a panga [machete]” heart,” he says. As Paul returned to preach in Jerusalem in Acts chapter 20, so Mohammad returned to his people living in Kenya.
Omar has served as a chaplain in Kijabe for 2.5 years now. He spends half his time ministering to Somali patients at the hospital, and the other half in Eastleigh doing follow-up.
“In spite of the challenges from my clan, I have found joy, strength, and identity in the Lord Jesus Christ,” he says. “I praise God for He has also given me new parents, new brothers and sisters in the Lord…”
Omar says that before he came to Kenya he hadn’t been able to share the gospel with his family or Somali relatives for 10 years.
“Now Somalis are coming to me because they need my help,” he says. “God works in mysterious ways.” ¤
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