Posted on 08/28/2014 2:53:00 AM PDT by markomalley
Despite how unsavory and barbaric Islamic groups and persons around the world have been acting—whether Nigeria’s Boko Haram, Mesopotamia’s Islamic State, Somalia’s Shabaab—perhaps few things are as disgusting and cowardly as the Muslim rape of nuns: defenseless Christian women who sacrifice much of their lives to help sick and needy Muslims.
The latest such attack comes from Bangladesh, which is over 90% Muslim in population. In early July, dozens of men armed with machetes, knives and iron rods attacked the convent of PIME (Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions nuns in Boldipuku), a village mission in north Bangladesh.
In the words of Bishop Sebastian Tudu “the nuns were beaten and molested, ending when police arrived.”
Catholic Online has the complete story:
[S]ome 60 men attempted to loot the building and rape the nuns… The attackers first tied the hands and legs of the mission’s two night watchmen and gagged them in the early morning hours. They then broke down the door of the room where the assistant pastor Father Anselmo Marandy was sleeping. They then raided the convent located in the mission campus…. Three PIME nuns suffered attempted rape and were sent to their provincial house in Dhaka, the national capital where they are trying to overcome the shock and mental suffering. “It’s very sad that the sisters cannot continue to work for the people, but our sisters are no longer safe,” Rosaline Costa, a Catholic human rights activist lamented. Local Christians are currently living in fear since the attack. Christians form only 0.8 percent of Dinajpur district’s three million people.
Although some of those quoted in the Catholic Online report say that this attack is “unprecedented,” the fact is, raped nuns is a phenomenon that goes back centuries. According to Muslim historian Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi (1364-1442), during his raids on then Christian-majority Egypt, Caliph Marwan II (r.744–50) “made captive a number of women from among the nuns of several convents. And he tried to seduce one of them.”
The account describes how the enslaved nun tricked him into killing her, by claiming she had a magic oil that make skin impenetrable: “She then took some oil and anointed herself with it; then stretched out her neck, which he smote with the sword, and made her head fly. He then understood that she preferred death to defilement.”
Writing in the 10th century, the Coptic chronicler Severus ibn Muqaffa records that “the Arabs [i.e., Muslims] in the land of Egypt had ruined the country…. They burnt the fortresses and pillaged the provinces, and killed a multitude of the saintly monks who were in them [monasteries] and they violated a multitude of the virgin nuns and killed some of them with the sword.”
After the Islamic conquest of Constantinople in 1453, according to eyewitness accounts, “Monasteries and Convents were broken in. Their tenants were killed, nuns were raped, many, to avoid dishonor, killed themselves. Killing, raping, looting, burning, enslaving, went on and on according to tradition.”
Such is history—expunged as it is in the modern West—even as it repeats itself today. Thus, in August 2013, after torching a Franciscan school in Egypt, “Islamists,” in the words of the AP, “paraded three nuns on the streets like ‘prisoners of war’” and “Two other women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they fought their way through a mob.”
Indeed, the rise in attacks on Christian nuns throughout the Islamic world further demonstrates that they are no more inviolable than other “infidel” women:
•Somalia: In response to Pope Benedict’s historical quotes which, like so many other things so enraged the Islamic world, Muslims in Somalia shot Leonella Sgarbati—a 66-year-old nun who had devoted 30 years of her life working in Africa—in her back. Her last words before dying in hospital were: “I forgive; I forgive.”
•Pakistan: In September 2012, gunmen on motorbikes dressed in green (Islam’s color) opened fire on the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Cathedral in Hyderabad, murdering at least 28 people. Their immediate target was a nun, Mother Christina.
•Libya: In February 2013, after the fall of Col. Gaddafi, Islamic rebels threatened nuns into fleeing the nation. They had been there since 1921, focused primarily on helping the sick and needy.
•Palestinian Authority: Last year, nuns of the Greek-Orthodox monastery in Bethany sent a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urging him to respond to the escalation of attacks on the Christian house, including the throwing of stones, broken glass, theft and looting of the monastery property.
•Philippines: In an article discussing a Christmas Day church bombing in a Muslim-majority region, we learn that the jihadi group responsible “has been blamed for several bomb attacks on the Roman Catholic cathedral in Jolo since the early 2000s and for kidnapping priests and nuns.”
•Guinea: In June 2013, during a mob-led frenzy, Christians and their churches were savagely attacked in the Muslim-majority nation—with some 95 Christians slain and 130 wounded—including “the quarters of the nuns, [which] was looted before being torched.”
•Syria: Islamic rebels forcibly abducted 13 Christian nuns and three maids, holding them captive for three months. They were finally released after the Bashar government agreed to release some 150 female criminals in exchange.
The above examples come from several countries that have little in common with one another—neither race, language, culture, nor economics—only Islam.
That alone should say something.
But no matter. Far from discussing Islamic history and doctrine, and how they tie to current events—especially the subhuman treatment of non-Muslim “infidels”—the predominant Western mentality simply dismisses Muslim violence as the West’s fault, or, in the words of ex-nun Karen Armstrong and Islamic apologist extraordinaire, “We did this.” Armstrong—who quit the nunnery only to engage in pro-Islamic mummery—insists that what’s needed is for us to focus more on “Muslim pain, Muslim suffering.”
Such, according to the leftist mentality, are the “real” reasons why, wherever Muslim-majorities live near non-Muslim minorities, from the dawn of Islam till today, the latter are being attacked into extinction.
Doing what the Muslims god tells them to do, that is the ENEMY.
Abandon missions to Muslim and other terroristic countries, places and regions. It’s a waste of time to convert someone who will then be killed for converting. There are enough other fields to harvest elsewhere. Let Islam marinate in it’s own juices. The same should go for the Peace Corps, technology transfers, military missions, etc. Partition them off.
But still pray for their conversion to Christ though.
Sure. Again, the fields elsewhere are groaning for need of workers, why send good missionaries to an almost certain death who can accomplish so much elsewhere? Asia, Eastern & Western Europe, the Pacific and even here in North America. It’d be like QuikTrip rebuilding in Ferguson.
The whole world NEEDS the good news of the Gospel of Jesus. Besides now, you have the internet that can do a very excellent job also as well as person to person. No missionary work is ever wasted.
Even in Ferguson they are now reopening businesses.
It is doing what Jesus COMANDS us Christians to do, “go out and make diciples of all the nations,” PERIOD.
Because of the missionary work going on in Africa and in Asia for example, now they too are sending missionaries to Europe and even to North America.
First of all, these nuns were Bangladeshi.
Second of all, there have been Roman Catholics in Bangladesh, at least, since the beginning of the 17th Century. (I have no idea if there were so-called "Thomas Christians" that migrated from India before that time...if so, that means that they could have been there since the first or second century)
It’s a waste of time to convert someone who will then be killed for converting.
Really?
Apoc 6:
[9] And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held.
[10] And they cried with a loud voice, saying: How long, O Lord (holy and true) dost thou not judge and revenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
[11] And white robes were given to every one of them one; and it was said to them, that they should rest for a little time, till their fellow servants, and their brethren, who are to be slain, even as they, should be filled up.
Doesn't seem like a waste to me.
Do as you wish.
All over the world muslims engage in savagery toward non-muslims and the west calls one a bigot for mentioning islam’s violent history.
AMEN, it is not a waste of time. The truth is that even those who are Muslim NEED to hear the good news of the Gospel of Jesus.
The reality is that even in the west there are Muslims as well.
Yet the truth is slowly is coming out about Islam.
At least Americans are armed to the teeth.
PRAY for the conversion of ALL to Christ, including Muslims.
California is about to pass a law that if you’re considered “dangerous” you’ll have all firearms taken away for at least 21 days and probably a year or more.
Not saying it is easy for them to convert. But there have been a few exceptions over the years.
Frankly, you could have said the same thing for converts from Judaism and Paganism in the first few centuries after Christ.
If it was easy, people would say that conversion is simply the work of man -- it's not easy: therefore, we acknowledge that the prime mover in the heart of man is the Holy Spirit.
Sure about that?
Sources please. Thank-you.
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