Mom pleads with Islamic captors to return only daughter

The mother of a kidnapped Christian girl is pleading with her Islamic captors to release her daughter.

“I have nothing to say other than they should have pity on my only daughter and release her,” Rebecca Sharibu, whose daughter Liya Sharibu, was abducted last month by Islamic terrorists in northeast Nigeria.

On Wednesday, the Islamic terror group known as Boko Haram returned 101 of the 110 girls they had kidnapped on February 19 from a school in Dapchi, a town in Nigeria’s Yobe state.

15-year-old Liya Sharibu was not freed because she is a Christian and reportedly refused to convert to Islam.

Liya’s mother fainted when she heard the devastating news that her daughter was not among those released this week.

“My heart was broken on Wednesday morning when I searched through the released girls and could not set my eyes on my dear daughter, Leah,” Mrs. Sharibu told a Nigerian newspaper.

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With tears streaming down her face, Mrs. Sharibu said everyone should be free to practice his or her faith without fear of retribution.

“It {is} not her fault that she is a Christian,” Sharibu said. “I know that in this world, everyone chooses the path of faith he or she has chosen in worshipping God. There is no way one could be forced to do what he or she does not know.”

Liya’s parents were told by some of the girls who were released that their daughter was held back at the last moment when her Islamic captors forced her to recite an Islamic creed for conversion.

“My daughter was told that she must recite the Kalima Shahada {the Islamic profession of faith in one God}, {but} she {didn’t} know how to recite it,” Sharibu narrated to a reporter.

According to reports, Liya was already in a car with several other girls when the kidnappers pulled her aside and asked her to convert to Islam.

“They said my daughter would only be brought back home the day she knows how to recite Kalima shahada,” Liya’s mom recounted. “She insisted that she does not know how to recite {the creed} and that she was not brought up as a Muslim. That was why she was held back.”

When Liya was pulled off the car, she reportedly told some of the girls to send a message to her parents.

“She pleaded with her friends that if they eventually made it home successfully, they should inform her parents to continue to pray for her {and} for God to protect her and bring her home safely as well,” Mrs. Sharibu said.

The 101 girls freed, most of whom were Muslims, were invited to the residence of Nigeria’s president on Friday.

“To the rescued students, we want to assure you, as our daughters, that you will freely live and pursue your dreams in Nigeria in peace and order without fear of violence or molestation,” Muhammadu Buhari, president of Nigeria, told the girls.

Liya’s father, Nata Sharibu, is glad the girls are back home with family, but said he will not be happy until his daughter is also returned.

“Nigeria must do all within its powers to go and bring back my daughter, the same way they did to others,” Mr. Sharibu told  a local newspaper. “I really want to thank and appreciate the people of Dapchi community especially how they rallied round us at this time of great sorrow.”

Boko Haram, which in local Hausa language means, “Western education is forbidden” is a radical Islamic group that openly calls for Sharia, or Islamic law to be instituted in Nigeria.

Boko Haram believes it is against Islamic law for girls to go to school.

On Wednesday, armed men driving in nine vehicles brought the girls back and dropped them off in the center of Dapchi.

Terrified residents emerged from their homes to suddenly see the freed girls.

“Their abductors brought them, dropped them outside the school and left, without talking to anyone,” said an eyewitness.

The extremists reportedly said they released the girls out of pity but warned parents to never put their daughters in school again.