A prolonged effort by Islamists to seize a Christian school in Sudan persists into this month.
On September 3, an Islamic business interest dispatched three armed men who forcefully entered the Evangelical School of Sudan in Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, threatening hundreds of mainly Christian displaced persons amid ongoing internal conflict, according to a local church leader.
The intruders reportedly reached the school’s headmaster’s office, belonging to the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC), and broke down the door, with the leader stating they made no specific deadline but threatened to take over the property by force.
This institution faced multiple assaults during the regime of former President Omar al Bashir, often involving supporters of the land-seizing Muslim businessman, supported by police forces.
Since the outbreak of civil war between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in April 2023, conditions in Sudan have deteriorated further. According to the 2025 World Watch List (WWL) by Open Doors, there has been an increase in the number of Christians killed, sexually assaulted, and Christian homes and businesses attacked.
The report states, “Christians of all backgrounds are trapped in the chaos, unable to flee. Churches are shelled, looted and occupied by the warring parties.”
Both the RSF and SAF are Islamist factions, and they have targeted displaced Christians on accusations of supporting the opposing side.
The dispute between the two extremist Islamic factions., which followed a military coup in October 2021, has caused widespread terror among civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and over 11.9 million people displaced within and outside Sudan’s borders, according to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR).
Sudan is ranked No. 5 among the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian in the 2025 WWL, up from number 8 the previous year. It first entered the top 10 in 2021 at number 13.
In 2019, the U.S. Department of State removed Sudan from its list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), which includes nations that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom,” and placed it on a watch list.
Previously, Sudan was designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018. In December 2020, it was removed from the State Department’s Special Watch List.
The Christian population in Sudan is estimated at around 2 million, amounting to only about 4.5% of the total population of over 43 million.
